Blogging Roller

Social software and multi-media whiz kid for hire

2007-09-26T08:44:00+00:00

Local multi-media and social software whiz kid Brian Russell is hanging out his shingle as an consultant. Best of luck, Brian. If you're looking to grow an online community or upgrade your organization to Web 2.0, check out his resume and portfolio.

Raleigh bloggers tonight and a proposed change

2007-07-10T15:05:33+00:00

Looks like we're going to have a pretty good turn-out for the Raleigh bloggers meet-up tonight (7PM at Raleigh Times) with Pat Mueller, Jackson Fox, Wayne Sutton, Michael Kimsal and perhaps even Mister Sugar himself planning to show up. That's a little unusual because attendance has been pretty spotty recently. In fact, last time it was just Pat and I sipping pints outside of the Raleigh Times Bar.

Pat proposed that we rename, refocus and relocate the Raleigh Bloggers meet-up. He suggested that we admit our geek nature by renaming it the "RTP Blogging Code Monkeys Meet-up." Also that we move it to the RTP area so it's convenient to folks from all three corners of the Triangle. I'm ready for a change and declining attendance is a drag, so I'm a big +1 on that. I suggested that we be more inclusive to non-bloggers with a blurb like this:

RTP dev/blogger meet-up. Come and chat about software development and web-technologies with Triangle-area code monkeys and bloggers.

Interested? If so, subscribe to the BlogTogether mailing lists for further updates.

Nice weekend and DCampSouth

2007-06-04T09:41:52+00:00

It was a nice weekend: I had dinner and went to a musical (The Full Monty at the RLT, quite good) with my parents, played some Heroscape with the kids, got a little work done and on Saturday I attended DCampSouth.

DCampSouth was a lot of fun. Thanks to Jackson Fox and friends for creating just the right environment for a barcamp experience. Here are a couple of notes on my experience.

The day started with a keynote by Thomas Vanderwal. He discussed how to design social software centered on the user, the person or the "person using" as he prefers to say since he dislikes the term user and it's negative connotations. I sensed that the term "developer" might have some negative connotation for Thomas and I felt tempted to ask him to refer to developers as people too, or "persons developing." Despite that developer vs. design guy tension, the talk as informative and full of good ideas. For example he stressed how important it is to provide a good experience for individual users and especially for the 1:1 connections between users since those are so valuable and nuanced. Too often, he said, developers and designers focus on the many and forget to focus on the one.

Vanderwal also talked about using tagging to help people navigate and self-organize corporate intranets. So I had to ask him what software folks are using for that. He mentioned an open source option Scuttle, DogEar from Lotus Connections and had high praise for ConnectBeam.

After the keynote, everybody gathered in the lobby to propose and pitch sessions. I was torn between Ruby Sinreich's Microformats session and Kim Ashley's Web behind the firewall session. I ended up in the Web 2.0 behind the firewall sessions where we discussed the difficulties of using blogs/wikis in a top-down control environment, the self-service nature of Web 2.0 tools and tagging for intranets, which everybody thought was a great idea -- especially the two guys in the room from the stealth startup ("Distruptive Monkey" I think they said).

Finally, I attended Jackson Fox's agile vs. web development session. I always thought web development was especially well suited to agile techniques, since you can deploy often and you get constant user feedback. Apparently, it's not that easy if you want to follow the various agile methodologies out there. I found Jackson's discussion of using agile methodologies at Lulu.com very interesting.

Overall DCampSouth was a nice way to spend a Saturday and thanks again to Jackson for that. We need more of the BarCamps around here.

DCampSouth

2007-06-01T10:53:25+00:00

I feel bad blogging about this so last minute. I really should have mentioned it weeks ago.

I just signed up for DCampSouth, a BarCamp style unconference for "anyone interested in design and user experience" that's happening here in Raleigh, tomorrow June 2 from 8:30 - 4PM. The attendee list looks interesting and the venue certainly looks pretty far out (literally and figuratively): the School of Communication Arts housed in "three Monolithic hurricane proof, clear span concrete domes."

It's a busy week but I'll definitely be able to make it to the morning and some of the afternoon sessions.

Science blogging

2007-01-25T22:34:53+00:00

When I'm under deadline pressure of any sort, I tend to stop blogging. That's the case this week. It's already Thursday and haven't written about the NC Science Blogging conference that I attended in Chapel Hill last weekend. Gotta fix that.

The NC Science Blogging conference was put together by the BlogTogether crew, the same group of Chapel Hill bloggers that organized PodcasterCon last year and BloggerCon the year before - Bora Zivkovic, Anton Zuiker, Brian Russell and others. Again they put together a wonderful un-conference and drew a crowd from up and down the east coast and beyond.

The days started with a Science Blogging 101 session by Bora himself. Next up was Hunt Willard, director of the Duke's Genome Sciences & Policy institute. He's not a blogger but he had good advice for science bloggers and stressed the importance of science writing, engaging the public and making science more accessible to lay people. Brian Russell posted audio of Hunt's entire talk. Popular science blogger Janet Stemwedel was up next. She talked about her personal experiences as a science blogger and also stressed the importance of engaging the public and making science more accessible. Here are her slides (PPT).

In the afternoon, I went to a session on blog illustration, which focused mostly on copyright issues. I was a little surprised to hear no mention of SVG and MathML. The last session I attended was devoted to helping the Museum of Life and Science (Durham, NC) figure out how to use blogs to engage and educate the public about nano-technologies (they've got an NSF grant to do things like that).

After the talks wrapped up a big crowd headed over to Carolina Brewery and Penang for dinner and I got a chance to hang out with the Chapel Hill blog mafia. That's something I always enjoy, plus I got to meet congressman Brad Miller again. All and all a great day. Thanks to the BlogTogether folks for putting it all together.

Update: I forgot to mention the blogs. If you'd like to read more about the conference, there's a big list of blogs and news stories about the Science Blogging conference on the BlogTogether site.