Broadband and Me

Blogwalk 4 (and other things)

Upstairs at the Old Crown
I attended the Blogwalk 4 meeting on Friday in London, unfortunately only for the morning as need to attend another meeting. Seems like I missed some good stuff not least the lunch and the walk :(

Good to see Johnnie again and rewarding to meet:

Lilia
Lloyd Davis
Martin Roell
Anu Gupta
Louise Ferguson
Suw Charman
Ed Mitchell
Julian Elve
Ian Glendinning
Chris Macrae
Riccardo Cambiassi
Desiree Gosby
Omar Green

Shame Ton couldn't attend as I was looking forward to meeting him.

The primary focus of blogging within the firewall gave rise to a number of themes which have exercised me for a while namely:

Why are corporates so afraid of losing control of comms? (after all they have already lost it)
How can you 'justify' blogging within a company? This can be to an external audience (outside the firewall) as well as internally (inside the firewall) - (guerilla tactics?)
Can you use an authentic voice? (sometimes, but there is an element of editing and adaption of voice)
Is the channel of a blog more compelling than other media channels? e.g. website, email, bulletin board, etc. (Yes, in certain situations, particularly when authentic and use of storytelling)

After I left
Seems like Julian got tasked with looking at internal wiki/blog tools along with user requirements.

Lilia has gone onto AOIR 5.0 (which seems equally stimulating - I think I should be there rather than at work!)

Biggest benefit
Although I took a lot away from the topics themselves, the most rewarding aspect was that the event challenged me to start thinking about things more deeply again. I think I need to start blogging about experience more to gain a better perspective on things.

Other Things
On a semi-related note, noticed this post on Monkeymagic regarding the virtues of the tea-break and chit chat.

Secondly Johnnie remarks on a similar topic of learning and collective intelligence:

Traditional models of group thinking seem based on me trying to cement my well-formed brick of thought to your well-formed brick. Increasingly, I find much more satisfaction in sharing the less-formed ideas and responses I have to conversations. I sense that by doing so, it's possible to create some sense of joint intelligence that can get beyond existing mental models.

I think Blogwalk 4 illustrated that for me - throw in a few ideas and anecdotes and see where others take them - a little like improvisation perhaps Johnnie?

Posted by Paul Goodison at September 20, 2004 07:18 PM | TrackBack