The opening speech at today’s Northern Voice session is Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress.

Matt discussed when he started blogging, before he created WordPress, Automattic, and Akismet. There were a number of blogging applications at the time, and he thought the platforms were already old. He started blogging, but was tired of the software. WordPress was rough in the beginning, and he took other open source software and then built upon it. WordPress is now 5 years old, and there have been 7.226,049 downloads thus far.

He has learned, in that time, what bloggers want. He believes bloggers want:

1. Expression - the fact that people could change there themes and designs any day and time. The themes allowed people to make their online presence their own. Spammers are digital terrorists. When he discussed Facebook, he talked about how people use the Inbox and photos most.
2. Public - that people share with people. The most successful platforms are those that publish publicly. Sometimes permission systems inhibit growth. Privacy is important, but things that increase interaction and make it easy to follow and connect can have a
3. Validation - people check their stats
4. Form Dictates Writing - he spoke about the Prologue theme and Tumblr, which make it easy for people to interact and add information.

Matt then talked about some of his exhortations:

1. Exhortation #1 - We need to remove the Friction. We need Invisible Software, such as to be able to easily upgrade the software. There is an enormous amount of content that is being created, and it will increase.  We need to be able to filter things and make things more relevant. 
2. Exhortation #2 - We have to respect people’s time - if you are doing this, you are creating a lot of value. Adds can be overwhelming, and advertising and our models around here need to evolve.
3. Exhortation #3 - Kill the Megabrands. Look at how television evolved from the three original main channels. Our websites need to evolve just as Proctor and Gamble have evolved their brands (Tide, Head and Shoulders, etc.). The are successful and then they develop more. Danah Boyd did a great post about this.

The Achilles Heel of Web 2.0 is bad actors. People are moving away from email due to spam. Even Facebook is filled with spam, by having all the additional applications.

First generation social networks is all about making connections. In the Web 2.0 world, people congregate around Social Objects. Example, around photos, slides, videos, links, etc. People gather around common things. But then, once sites get popular, then people want to filter it and only get their own resources.

Open Source. Matt reviewed his previous blog posts, and in the long term things become noise as his tastes change. There are a number of freedoms in the open source movement. There are four freedoms, and I took a photo of them and will upload to Flickr and leave a link in the comment to this post when I have it uploaded.

As liveblogging allows me to write about what I am thinking about things, I am thinking about a comment somebody made yesterday where somebody talked about spoke about updating their liveblog posts by adding comments to their own post. It adds to comments as well as allows the information to still be done with time stamps.

The freedoms in an open source architecture allow us the right to make things different. The transparency and power of open source of some of the online systems would be powerful if added to politics and the political process.

Matt took some questions, and spoke more about the value of the freedom of open source, and then how that would be useful for government.

Matt then shared his contact information - m@mullenweg.com & http://ma.tt.

Tags: Northern Voice, nv08, WordPress

Boris is doing the introduction for the session, and he announced that Northern Voice is now an official society in BC now. That received some nice applause.

He recognized the sponsors of the session, and then gave useful information.

The tags for the session is northernvoice and nv08. We figured that out from the handouts from the Moosecamp yesterday.

Very upbeat introduction, full of energy, and lively. Nice job, Boris!

Tags: Northern Voice, nv08

Gene Smith is speaking about tagging at the Internet Bootcamp today, and he just mentioned that he recently wrote a book on tagging, entitled Tagging.

Tagging is a simple and quick way to add metadata to stuff you’re interested in, like photos, videos, blog posts and bookmarks

I read Gene’s book and commented on it on my blog, and am really glad to be able to hear him in person discuss tagging.

He presented a screencast movie about tagging with del.icio.us, which really started the craze toward tagging. Tagging is all over the place, and in the world of Web 2.0, tagging is becoming ubiquitous. Even Windows Vista has tagging!

Somebody just recommended the WordPress widget, Ultimate Tag Warrior. Another person mentioned Simple Tags.

I asked Gene the question about how to navigate the use of multiple words in tags, such as making phrases all one word, use spaces, underscores, hyphens, and the like. I find that I often make use of all the combinations and feel I do too much work to try to cover every base. His two-step response was exactly what I was looking for in an answer — do whatever you are doing and keep doing it consistently, as well as see what others are doing and continue to follow that (such as nv08). That is what I wanted to hear. With a lack of consistent standards out there, navigate it on my own.

To get started, tag your own blog posts, and then post / tag them to del.icio.us, and then follow the tags to see other people who have also tagged them similarly. Then, begin to see communities with your tags, such as nptech. Coordinating them with others, such as what we are doing here with nv08 for use at Google or even Flickr.

Gene will try to post these slides to SlideShare. Good idea!

Tags: Northern Voice, nv08, tagging

Stewart Mader is presenting on Wiki 101 during the nv08 Internet Bootcamp. Somebody asked him about what a wiki is, and he quoted a Business Week article that discussed various purposes of wikis. He mentioned that organizations are often hesitant to using wikis since there is fear about open access with rights.

Organizations can use wikis for keeping and updating agenda items, posting meeting minutes, and team participation with ownership of maintaining and revising content.

Stewart then spoke about a number of wiki tools and programs. I wish he would have had the names of the programs written on a slide or on the blackboard since I could not keep up with all them. I did catch wikimatrix.org, which helps people and organizations select which wiki tools to use.

He suggested running a pilot within organizations when bringing a new tool. Get a few people to begin using a tool and then spread it with a small group. This reminded me of the work in some of the quality and practice improvement work I do in my full-time position.

Wikis, to work, should begin with a BarnRaising so everybody begins together with using the new tool. This seems to be very collaborative, but my experience is that many people within organizations want the work to get done and assume others are “assigned” to do it.

He is using a number of “patterns” of wiki adoption, or rather terms that are used to describe the successful implementation of the wiki within an organization.

“If your staff is doing all this, then what value are you bringing to the organization.” If this is the case, then it seems that level of middle management is not valuable or really needed. This was in reply to a question I had about motivating hierarchical organizations to share in the collaborative environment of wikis. This is similar to the challenges of implementing and using knowledge management applications within organizations.

Technorati Tags: nv08,northern voice,wiki

Tags: Northern Voice, nv08, wiki

I like the idea of creating space for virtual collaboration, something available within the Intranet, so everybody can access it. This is related to paramedics and having a space for them to collaborate.

They are suing SharePoint, which has a document library as well as discussion space, etc. They have issues with access to their site.

Somebody just interrupted her and asked her to move on so there could be interaction. I just shared a comment about creating content there first, and then trying to sell the system to users. People will not go to the SharePoint system unless there is a reason to go there first.

They are having challenges with encouraging collaboration on their site. A person who used to be an academic shared how there is a body of literature with suggestions for addressing these issues.

Another person shared the concept of starting with the personal and then moving to the professional.

Tags: Northern Voice, nv08

Kathleen Milberry who blogs at Geeks and Global Justice is speaking about her blog and how it is related and integrated into her dissertation research. She stated that blogs are really amenable to political activism.

Marc Lee then spoke about his work at his website, The Progressive Economics Forum. Marc uses Dreamhost and likes it, which certainly is counter to many of the other recent complaints I hear about the host. He finds this useful for real-time commentary, especially for reaching the blogosphere before things formally hit the media.

This session seems to be about sharing what Kathleen and Marc do with their blogs for political and research reasons. As a session in the Unconference, it did not have a specific and formal “point” outside of sharing their work and vision.

Interesting DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) in the US that allows people to contact a domain host to effectively stop people from using stolen content. Somebody stated that people who are doing political blogging should be familiar with this, since people can complain about things and then the host can shut down the domain very quickly.

Somebody just recommended Alex King’s Share This Wordpress widget. Will have to check it out.

People are sharing a lot of great Canadian / American concepts and content. What an open group of people with a wide variety of expertise who are willing to share and help one another. This is one of the reasons why I am so fond of Northern Voice!

Kathleen just mentioned that political and activist blogging is a great act of empowerment. That fits so well with my blog name, Silence and Voice!

Tags: Northern Voice, nv08

Northern Voice has started with the Unconference today. I will be doing a lot of liveblogging along the way using Windows Live.

I decided to attend Blogging 101, the first of the sessions in Internet Bootcamp. Richard Eriksson of Raincity Studios presented. I decided that I wanted to see the approach that this stream is taking as I will be speaking about Liveblogging 101 later today at 2:00 pm.

Richard just made an interesting comment about adding blog comments. He mentioned that he adds his own comments to his own blog to help make his blog more conversational as well as to add more information

Somebody added a comment about writing about your blog’s purpose, whatever that purpose may be.

Richard then spoke about RSS feeds, and I shared a comment about subscribing to RSS feeds for academic journals. There are a number of academic journals I read (or at least want to see the content that is being published), and I subscribe to them using FeedDemon (which I have used for years, constantly gets better each year, and is now free!).

Richard is giving a good introductory session right now. He made good use of PowerPoint slides, following some of the best practices of having no more than six words per slide. While there are many reasons to use PowerPoint, for a presentation like this the few words per slide is really valuable.

Richard was discussing Event blogging and Liveblogging. He discussed how liveblogging can involve adding date stamps each time a post is updated. I think that may be useful if using a service such as Cover It Live, but that system (with great bells and whistles) is still a little bulky to use.

Twitter is a great microblogging platform, using only 140 characters. I Tweet at http://twitter.com/JeffreyKeefer. Sketchblogging is a concept I am not very familiar with, but it reminds me of Hugh’s work.

Tumbleblogging is something I am not very familiar with, so will have to look into this a bit more later. Mental note to myself.

Now that the time for this is running out, I see that lots of people still seem to have lots of questions. Good to leave a session with continued interest still there.

Tags: Northern Voice, nv08

The official opening of Northern Voice 2008 took place this evening at the Tiki Room, in the Waldorf Hotel in Vancouver. Good food, good friends, and some wonderful new colleagues made for a wonderful evening. I expect to have a lot of more specific blogging, as well as a health share of liveblogging (come see my presentation on Friday!), over the next few days.

I uploaded the pictures I took to Flickr for all to enjoy and share.

Tags: Northern Voice, nv08

Since I leave on Wednesday for Northern Voice in Vancouver, it seems there is no better time than the present to get ready to go. I can pack on Wednesday following my Master Packing List,  a list I created that includes a check-off of every item (suitcase and carry-on) I need to bring with me (or consciously exclude) from any trip I take (I hate forgetting the camera recharger or a pencil with Pos-It flags for whatever it is I am reading).

However, I am now doing the more “silent” items involved in preparing for the trip, those beyond merely gathering everything together and throwing it all in a bag. These are some of the digital items I need to consider, like a check-off list, when I am preparing to travel:

1. Archive and Backup Outlook - This should go without saying (and insofar as it does we tend to forget) that archiving items in Outlook and then backing up the Outlook folders themselves is a good practice to do on a regular basis anyway. This involves more than just automating the processes and then having them run.
2. Backup Personal Folders - The second step, just as critical as the first, is to backup all these files, and indeed all personal folders on the computer to an external storage device. One never knows when something problematic will happen, such as breakage or worse, so being prepared means being backed up. I often let this step go and do more infrequently than I should, but this is something I plan to do later tonight.
3. Remove Old Photos from the Camera - When I take photos, I usually move them to my computer then consider uploading to Flickr if appropriate. However, there are times that I neglect to get these photos off my camera, and they tend to accumulate there. Getting ready for a trip where I am planning to take a lot of photos, I need to free up as much memory as possible (prior to my computer backup, of course!).
4. Charge Bose Headphones - I do not use my Bose headphones very often outside of when I fly, and thus the battery tends to lose its charge. The headphones are useless in an uncharged state, and I really do need to get some sleep on this red-eye so I will make sure they are fully charged.

Is there anything else I am missing?

Technorati Tags: Northern Voice,nv08

Tags: Northern Voice, nv08