Atlanta Media Bloggers

Sherry tagged me

So I'm supposed to write five things about myself?

This 'blog slam' is a tagging game where you write 5 things about yourself and then tag 5 bloggers to do the same.

1. Soon I am moving to NYC to start a new job.

2. I think I hate packing and moving more than any human being on Earth, because I have a Grand Fixed Cross in my astrological chart, which means I'm incredibly stubborn, and am always pulled in four stubborn directions. So instead of sitting still, it means I've moved all over the country all my life. And every time I do it, it's so wrenching, it's a bit like being drawn and quartered as a torturous punishment in a medieval town. And I wouldn't NOT do it for anything.

3. I just watched "Good Night and Good Luck" about Edward R. Murrow, Fred Friendly, and Senator McCarthy, again, and I'm so intensely moved every time I watch it, it leaves me gasping and speechless. Maybe that will pass after I get some distance from similar circumstances.

4. In my past life, I was a Christmas Elf! Santa Claus was berry berry good to me this year, and for that I am deeply grateful. Merry Christmas, all!

Oh, and Tag, You're It!

Chip
Joshua Kucera
Wally
Crowpoet
Tim A Gem

Chris

p.s. Sherry I'm very sorry to hear about your dad.

 

My five

I was recently slammed, so now I must comply. Here goes...

1. I used to play the trumpet in grade school.
2. I love comics and have several boxes of comics collecting dust in my attic. 
3. I was once a prolific screenwriter.
4. I used to publish an ezine of bizarre crime fiction.
5. I have directed several music videos.

Okay, so now I have to tag 5 more bloggers. Let me see, hmmm...

Amybeth Hale
Sherry Heyl
Cheezhead
The Chad
Gretchen Ledgard

slam blog

I just read about a little blogging game going on that kind of reminds me of high school slam books. Did you all have slam books? It was a book someone would create asking basic and sometimes embarrassing questions, and then they would get all their friends to fill it out. The fun part was to read everyone's answers.

This 'blog slam' is a tagging game where you write 5 things about yourself and then tag 5 bloggers to do the same. The point that Charlene Li makes is how it even broke through to corporate bloggers and the joy of getting to know the real people within the corporations. Now, I personally think everyone already knows everything about me. But I'll give it a shot....

1. I played Cello in the 7th grade...and was quite good.
2. I was on the waterpolo team in 9th grade...but I swim like a rock - so I passed towels out.
3. I have successfully written 2 songs with my husband in the past 16  years...neither of which we have anymore :(
4. The very first piece of writing I ever published for all the world to see, is under another person's name.
5. I once out ran a cop - by accident...

OK...so now I tag 5 bloggers to write their 5 things.

Kevin Howarth
Amber Rhea
Grayson Daughters
Jim Stroud
Chris Boese

Let's have a virtual meeting this month!

Hey y'all!

Yeah, it's been cooooollld out, and rainy enough to curl your hair. And yeah, a whole bunch of us have conflicts up the wazoo, preventing us from making a goodly quorum for our monthly mind meld.

And yeeeaaah, SOME of us got to go on a cool road trip, and they need to be telling the rest of us who didn't go some wacky stories, amazing anecdotes, and tortured theories about Web 2.0 and unConferences (what the hell is an unConference, anyway? I'm asking this on behalf of the peanut gallery. There are no stupid questions around here).

The topic for our meeting, if we had been able to hold it, was going to be Online Communities, and the intangible something that makes them hold together, that gives them power, that structures cyberspace perhaps more strongly than in some of our real lives.

What is it? One friend once told me that online communities were fake, no more real than the people who gather at around the piano in the lounge at an airport bar. He said there's nothing that really ties the people together, no strong ties, no obligations. People come, and they go.

And some of us actually like communities that have that kind of freedom, the freedom from guilt and obligation, the knowledge that the people who are present are there because they want to be, not because anyone is making them. That was one of the beautiful things I discovered in my online ethnography of the very strong communities of the Xenaverse, the fandom groups centered around the TV show "Xena: Warrior Princess."

I think of it like gravity, the so-called "strength of weak ties." Of all the forces in physics (electromagnetic, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force), gravity appears to be the weakest, the easiest to overcome (don't believe me? Jump!). But gravity is like a prevailing wind. You can stand against it, but it ends up shaping everything (even the shape of the cellulite in our legs!). Gravity holds entire solar systems in orbit, and more. I think the weakest force field can actually be the strongest.

Businesses look at the blogosphere and social media as an opportunity, but often they see it as a top-down opportunity for them, rather than a chance to harness real bottom-up grassroots force.

But is that a real force? Or is it like herding cats?

Or maybe the mindset is all wrong. Maybe its wrong to even think that cats should be herded in the first place.

Soooo, what are we doing here? Do you want to be here? Are you obligated to be here? Do you get something of value out of being here? Is this a cool community to be a part of?

If so, I hope some more of you will chime in in this space. It's been a while since I sent out invitations on how to use this site, but I am happy to resend any invitations that got lost or misplaced. Just zap me a note.

If you have a blog or blogs, a good blog promotion strategy is to get hooked in with an existing community, so that people start reading your blog, and folks comment back and forth on each others' blogs, and we can spread some link love around.

I SURE WOULD LIKE TO BE SPREADING SOME MORE LINK LOVE AROUND!

So if you've got a blog, post up a little introduction to it here on this site, with your link. Tell us why we should peek in, check your blog out. Maybe you're feeling shy, just getting your blog legs. We'll hold your hand. That's what link love is all about.

We're Atlanta Media Bloggers. We're into blogs. We have blogs. OK, all together now:

Send us your links, your huddled URLs longing to breathe free...

Ahhh. Isn't that better?

Let the virtual meeting commence.

All in flavor? Up hosed?

respectfully submitted,

Chris Boese

Is There a Place For Bloggers in Local TV?

Maybe I should add to that title... "And would you even want to be there?" Trust me, local news stations are insane asylums! But sometimes it's the inmates who are having all the fun. This article is fascinating, and I'm going to try to contact WKRN (Nashville) about what they're doing.

By placing the tools of the personal media revolution in the hands of professionals, the station is opening the door to uses of the material that go far beyond what's seen on-the-air. Many of the VJs also have blogs, and those will evolve to include their video. The idea is to turn each beat into an on-line franchise, and the options after that are pretty significant, especially as the audience/readers get involved.

Nashville has a remarkably cohesive and growing blogosphere, and Sechrist has announced plans to work towards a citizens-media-generated daily news program through them, and again, the flexibility offered by the VJ concept — and the eye-opening revelation that local amateur journalists can be very good and knowledgeable storytellers — make this a real possibility moving forward. What will this do for the people who don't watch local news anymore? Stay tuned.

Full article here.

A delightful parable by Nick Carr

This whole topic has generated much kerfuffle in the blogosphere, but it's the kind of kerfuffle I like, because it forces introspection, forces one to examine unquestioned assumptions about whether online interfaces are as democratizing as the spin often claims, whether there could be political/social biases embedded in deep structure interfaces.

The folks who have roundly spanked Carr for claiming things that they say the open "Home on the Range" of the Internet makes impossible have a point, but still, Carr's humorous parable rings true more often than not, particularly in the opening bit, and the epilogue.

Link: Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: The Great Unread.

The Great Unread

Prelude

Once upon a time there was an island named Blogosphere, and at the very center of that island stood a great castle built of stone, and spreading out from that castle for miles in every direction was a vast settlement of peasants who lived in shacks fashioned of tin and cardboard and straw.

Part one:
On the nature of innocent fraud

I've been reading a short book - an essay, really - by John Kenneth Galbraith called The Economics of Innocent Fraud. It's his last work, written while he was in his nineties, not long before he died. In it, he explains how we, as a society, have come to use the term "market economy" in place of the term "capitalism." The new term is a kinder and gentler one, with its implication that economic power lies with consumers rather than with the owners of capital or with the managers who have taken over the work of the owners. It's a fine example, says Galbraith, of innocent fraud.

An innocent fraud is a lie, but it's a lie that's more white than black. It's a lie that makes most everyone happy. It suits the purposes of the powerful because it masks the full extent of their power, and it suits the purposes of the powerless because it masks the full extent of their powerlessness.

What we tell ourselves about the blogosphere - that it's open and democratic and egalitarian, that it stands in contrast and in opposition to the controlled and controlling mass media - is an innocent fraud.

Part two:
The loneliness of the long-tail blogger

The thing about an innocent fraud, though, is that it's not that hard to see through. Often, in fact, you have to make an effort not to see through it, and at some point, for some people, the effort no longer seems worth it. A few days back, the blogger Kent Newsome asked, "Who are the readers of our blogs?" His answer had a melancholy tone:

The number of bloggers competing for attention makes it seem like the blogosphere is a huge, chaotic place. But it only seems that way because we have all ended up in a small room at the end of the hall. When people refuse to converse with me or go out of their way to link around me, it hurts a little. Until I remember that while they aren't listening to me, no one in the real world is listening to them either ...

[...]

The best way, by far, to get a link from an A List blogger is to provide a link to the A List blogger. As the blogophere has become more rigidly hierarchical, not by design but as a natural consequence of hyperlinking patterns, filtering algorithms, aggregation engines, and subscription and syndication technologies, not to mention human nature, it has turned into a grand system of patronage operated - with the best of intentions, mind you - by a tiny, self-perpetuating elite. A blog-peasant, one of the Great Unread, comes to the wall of the castle to offer a tribute to a royal, and the royal drops a couple of coins of attention into the peasant's little purse. The peasant is happy, and the royal's hold over his position in the castle is a little bit stronger.

[...]

Epilogue

One day, a blog-peasant boy found buried in the dust beside his shack a sphere of flawless crystal. When he looked into the ball he was astounded see a moving picture. It was an image of a fleet of merchant ships sailing into the harbor of the island of Blogosphere. The ships bore names that had long been hated throughout the island, names like Time-Warner and News Corp and Pearson and New York Times and Wall Street Journal and Conde Nast and McGraw-Hill. The blog-peasants gathered along the shore, jeering at the ships and telling the invaders that they would soon be vanquished by the brave royals in the great castle. But when the captains of the merchant ships made their way to the gates of the castle, bearing crates of gold, they were not repelled by the royals with cannons but rather welcomed with fanfares. And all through the night the blog-peasants could hear the sounds of a great feast inside the castle walls.

   

What's been going on with me...

Hey y'all,

I been kinda quiet this week, because something both awful and tremendous has been happening to me, and it has to do with blogging, so I decided I should share it with you folks here.

I just launched a new blog Tuesday night, into Wednesday 3 A.M., and within its first 24 hours of existence, it got more than 1,800 hits, from all over the world, starting in Australia and New Zealand, within hours of the site going live. (2,500+ hits in 48 hours)

I'm still pretty new to this group, so you probably haven't gotten a good bead on my hobby horses yet, but a REAL big one for me is studying online cybercultures and communities, and working out ways to understand how online communities work.

This makes me somewhat of a hardass when it comes to certain marketing assumptions about passive audiences, because I insist on user-centered design, and also user-co-constructed design, or ideally, entire cultures or communities collaboratively authoring their own virtual landscapes, grassroots, bottom up.

You can see why the recent attempts to commodify and commercialize the blogosphere tend to give me the heebie jeebies. These appear to me to be overt attempts to co-opt true bottom-up communities with subtle market forces, to sell soap instead of making communities the true center of interactions.

I didn't study the force and empowerment of real online communities just to be able to better think up ways to co-opt them. Working in new media causes me all kinds of moral dilemmas when the prevailing winds favor commercial forces over community, content, and communications.

Sometimes I feel like these things are another variation of an experiment Ragu did during the 1990s with "Mama's Kitchen," trying to coalesce an online community around talking about all things Ragu, all the time. I mean, there's only so many spaghetti recipes you can share, you know? And the commercial agenda was just so overt.

That's why, when I went to do my dissertation research into cybercultures and communities, and how interfaces shape and are shaped by communities, it was important to me to find something REAL, vital, something amazing. And I did. It was pure luck. That's all it was, pure luck. I stumbled upon the most amazing dissertation topic in the world.

So like Margaret Mead, I did a cyber-ethnography as a participant-observer over a two-year period in that particular online community. I captured texts, charted online personas, analyzed chat room interactions, studied flame wars on bulletin boards, listservs, diagrammed web sites, and collected the creative and communicative output of a community that was tightly-knit, more and more empowered to greater social action and activism, AND a community that both competed with and interacted with the mass media providers which gave the community its center and reason for authoring its own virtual landscape.

I entered the community, became immersed in it, and along the way, it also changed me. I made life-long friends. That was important, because the point of ethnography is to become an insider, and to establish reciprocity with the groups you interact with, so that you are not only TAKING from them, but that you also give something back, so the relationship is balanced, and not colonizing.

Many of you know by now, the community I studied was the Xenaverse, the online fans of the show "Xena: Warrior Princess." This was actually a precursor of the academic "Buffy" studies that came later (heh, I did it first, but I also owe my work to the face-to-face Star Trek community researchers who went before me). I started my formal data-gathering in early 1996, and completed the dissertation in 1998.

The terrible, terrible thing that happened was over last weekend, but I didn't find out until late Monday night, after getting home from the Steely Dan/Michael McDonald concert at Chastain.

A dear friend of mine from the Xenaverse, an active, important, dynamic member of this community and a person I've known both online and in person for more than ten years took her own life in a small trailer in Haines, Alaska, a little town where she was the doctor and director of the small medical clinic, living the dream she'd had for as long as I'd known her.

I'd known her in New York; I'd known her in California when she was going to medical school, and I'd watched her take Xena as her model for living and insist on taking her medical training to the Alaska Bush, a place she'd dreamt of for years, to try to make a difference.

What happened to lead to this tragic event is a long story that I won't go into here. The truth is, an online discussion group I manage had just gotten one of her normal emails on July 31, and there was no sign anything was remiss, although we did know she was going through a tough time, health-wise.

By the time I got off work Tuesday, I knew I had to do a memorial blog site for my friend, and I finished at 3 A.M. (I don't know if you're familiar with the genre, but I've done two others in 2003, one for my uncle, because I couldn't make it to his funeral, and one for a dear professor who passed away a month later--you can see that one here).

In some ways, I built the site as much for me as for the community that had given me so much. It was a way to deal with my grief, to honor and give expression to all the different aspects of her life, and to give the virtual communities which were so much a part of her life a place, a focal point to express their feelings as well.

My heart is still so full at the incredible response to this site, and people are still subscribing, still leaving guestbook entries. Someone contacted me about the memorial service in Haines on Sunday, wondering if I could in some way host an open chat space for a virtual memorial service at the same time, maybe in Second Life, something we had done in the Xena Palace back in the day, when "Xena" was still on the air. It was an amazing thing I documented in my dissertation, online funerals and weddings, other parties.

But this is 10 years later. Theorists write about the "strength of weak ties," but what I'm finding right now is that these ties are not weak at all, were never weak. I saw it in the way the news swept around the globe, swept across cyberspace, within hours, within days.

This is something corporate interests can never duplicate, bottle, or harness. That is the sheer beauty of it. It is something true, real, and moving. It is dynamic, empowering, and bottom-up.

I made this blog because my friend will never have a gravestone, and because she has no other family but us, so this site is her gravestone in cyberspace, a place where her people, her tribe, can find her, can remember her and tell tales of her great deeds like they were stories told around the campfire, to be passed on.

I did not create the site. I just gave it a platform, and like any memorial service, the people who come to speak about the person we've lost are authoring the space into existence with the shape of their words, their feelings, their memories.

I know I'm getting sentimental here, but I'm just in awe of what is happening, and I have no one else outside of that group to tell about it, to share the story with.

Chris