Sociocorpus - old GroupSense Online Groups Blog
notes on the evolving life of the socius online
note: sociocorpus has moved here
Thursday, October 09, 2003
Schwarzenegger Wants Davis to Stop Filling Posts and Signing Bills: "The group will do most of its work by e-mail and conference call, a Schwarzenegger aide said."posted by Walter Logeman 8:06 PM permanent link
Schwarzenegger Wants Davis to Stop Filling Posts and Signing Bills: "The group will do most of its work by e-mail and conference call, a Schwarzenegger aide said."
posted by Walter Logeman 8:05 PM permanent link
Thursday, August 21, 2003
Email Dead? Corante - a post by Ross Mayfield quoting many other items on the subject, claiming RSS is a better group tool. I doubt it myself as it is just not ubiquitous enough. Maybe in 2020.posted by Walter Logeman 5:44 AM permanent link
Friday, October 25, 2002
Ray Ozzie's Weblog The originator of Lotus Notes etc. has a radical idea here. Everything is Public, collaborative, open UNLESS designated otherwise.Unrealistic, right? Well, think again. Why have we grown so accustomed to the social norm that email should be private? Think about it. Start small. And remember that your company owns your inbox and outbox. What if all engineers within a company were given a new email address when they started, and were told "just use it for business" and "please note that everything that you do in email is in public view. In order to prevent embarassing moments, please keep matters of your personal privacy OUT of your assigned email box; use Groove for private matters. Oh, and by the way, here are the URLs of all of your team members' mailboxes, in case you care. Oh, and by the way, here's a site where you Google across all of them. Oh, also, I should mention that we never delete any email, by policy."
posted by Walter Logeman 9:13 PM permanent link
Tuesday, October 15, 2002
Wired 10.10: Being WirelessIn this article, Nicholas Negroponte explains the potential that wi-fi has to transform telecommunications.
This is potentially a self-organising virally spreading infrastructure based on autonomous units. Just add more nodes to the network and before long, you don't need a backbone.
posted by Dan Randow 1:44 PM permanent link
Wednesday, October 09, 2002
A Question of Blood This story reminds me of what is necessary to achieve peace: to act in love (I know it sounds tacky but yes) even with enemies.This is relevant to developing collaboration culture where it is often necessary to be the first to share - and maybe to continue to share for some time trusting that it will catch on.
posted by Dan Randow 6:23 PM permanent link
Speakers of the future may be flat and flexible
This is a great step towards a world where you can cut "universal media surface" from a roll. I'll have 10m, please of the:
- screen
- camera
- speaker
- microphone
- touch sensitive
- texturally active
- photo-voltaic
- battery
- conductor
- data storing
- data processing
- wirelessly networked
stuff.
posted by Dan Randow 6:14 PM permanent link
Tuesday, October 08, 2002
And where does Alkindi live? Mappa Mundi is to do with mapping the internet. There's a pattern emerging here.posted by Dan Randow 10:57 PM permanent link
Alkindi recommendation technology also uses clustering but in this case to reduce the complexity of prcessing vast amounts of recommendation data. Alkindi isolates clusters of users with similar tastes and progressively develops and validates recommendations against those.
posted by Dan Randow 10:43 PM permanent link
Economist.com | Internet topology This is worth investigating further. What they seem to be saying is that a standard node/link map doesn't accurately model the Internet. Busy nodes attract more links which forms clusters. These form self-similar patterns (that look similar at varying degrees of magnitificaiton). More useful is a cluster-based model that focuses on 'where the action is'.
posted by Dan Randow 10:37 PM permanent link
Revival of this Blog
I have decided I'd like a blog that's about me and my travels around the Internet and the ideas and projects I have on the go. As Online Groups are pretty central to those travels, I'll use this one.
posted by Dan Randow 10:32 PM permanent link
Thursday, May 16, 2002
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way How to ask questions that attract useful answers.This guide by geek/hacker luminary Eric S Raymond is aimed at people asking technical questions in online hangouts. It is applicable, however to anyone asking questions in online groups or communities and wanting useful answers.
Includes simple but oft ignored pointers like search google for it first.
posted by Dan Randow 6:25 PM permanent link
Wednesday, May 01, 2002
Online Community Report An Interview with Evan Williams, Bloggerby Jim Cashel.
Evan Williams heads Pyra Labs, creators of Blogger, the largest Weblog site online and the technology that underpins this very web page.
Jim Cashel is Chairman of online collaboration enablers Forum One Communications and Senior Editor of the Online Community Report.
posted by Dan Randow 5:53 PM permanent link
Pioneer Press | 04/22/2002 | Cyber-Crimestoppers In "virtual block clubs", police and residents are exchanging messages (via email groups) to reduce crime in their neighbourhood.
posted by Dan Randow 5:42 PM permanent link
Design for Community: Conversations: Interview: Chapter 12: A Conversation with Howard Rheingold a brief interview with Howard Rheingold about his soon to be published book "Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution".
The book points to significant social (and political) changes as communities become dramatically more enabled by ubiquitous participation technologies.
posted by Dan Randow 5:36 PM permanent link
Office .NET Revealed? From Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows, this possibly spurious preview glimpse suggests a "Next Generation MS Office" ("NGO"?) that looks like Office combined with Yahoo! Groups (tm). As well as an application suite, you get a suite of online services providing secure places to store and share files, calendars, messages etc.
posted by Dan Randow 5:33 PM permanent link
Tuesday, April 23, 2002
Toward High-Performance Organizations:A Strategic Role for Groupware
Douglas C. Engelbart
Bootstrap Institute
June 1992 (AUGMENT,132811,)
Interesting because of the pioneering aspect of this: 1992. Engelbart was onto a lot well before this - invented hypertext and the mouse in the sixties, all as part of a knowlege quest and vision.
posted by Walter Logeman 5:28 PM permanent link
Tuesday, April 16, 2002
Design for Community: About Welcome to Design for Community! If you're not sure what it is you're looking at, here's the basic idea: Design for Community is a book, an attitude, and, hopefully, a community.posted by Walter Logeman 12:30 AM permanent link
Saturday, April 06, 2002
O'Reilly Network: Jon Udell: Instant Outlining, Instant Gratification [Apr. 01, 2002]"When I turned in the first draft of my book, my editor, Tim O'Reilly, said: "This is great, but you ask too much from people." And he was right. I was advocating not just a communication tool, but a way of using it to optimize collaboration. That meant asking people to narrate their work, but also to think carefully about the attention demands they placed on their coworkers, and to label, structure, and layer their communications accordingly. Most people didn't want to do these things, and most people still don't.
"What does all this portend for instant outlining? There's reason to hope. It's been clear to me for a long while that the only thing that might displace email would be some kind of persistent IM. That's exactly what instant outlining is. If it catches on, and it's buzz-worthy enough to do that, we'll have a framework within which to innovate in ways that email never allowed."
Interesting article - but I think that it still won't catch on... persistent internet messageing, nice idea but email remains king IMO. ANY method of collab requires either dumbing the tools right down and working ad hoc OR education in a series of rules and protocols OR human facilitation and email groups + the GroupSense approach to their design and facilitation is a real world solution combining what people know already and do now with gentle nudges to a saner world. Well managed email groups have benefits over the Outlined approach in Radio. Threaded email IS outlined. It is persistent (locally and/or on the web). It is instant when needed, asynch when needed, groups can be defined and structured as needed and you can filter out certain users if you need to!
Why can't these guys use email + mailinglists?
posted by Walter Logeman 1:32 AM permanent link
Saturday, March 30, 2002
Small Pieces Loosely Joined A new book by David Weinberger, Co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto.He calls it 'A Unified Theory of the Web'.
I've read some of the kids' version of Small Pieces Loosely Joined . It's good but it's not a Bedtime Story.
posted by Dan Randow 2:02 AM permanent link
Sunday, December 30, 2001
Year-End Google Zeitgeist for 2001. A selection of tabular and graphical representations of search activity on Google in 2001. A picture of the Zeitgeist.posted by Dan Randow 7:09 PM permanent link
Jon Kleinberg's Homepage Jon Kleinberg
Associate Professor of Computer Science
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
My research is concerned with algorithms that exploit the combinatorial structure of networks and information.
~~~
Interestingly the research here is about physical as well as social atoms.
posted by Walter Logeman 7:11 AM permanent link
InFlow -- Social Network Mapping and Measuring Software
Valdis Krebs
Organizational Network Analysis Consultant
Valdis provides social network analysis software and services to organizations and their consultants.Explore how these organizations have benefited from the value of network analysis: IBM, TRW, Raytheon, Boeing, Lucent, Chrysler, Rubbermaid, Hiram-Walker, Aventis, Cardinal Health, Ohio Department of Education, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, ACEnet and others...
posted by Walter Logeman 7:06 AM permanent link
The INSNA Home Page Welcome to the International Network for Social Network Analysis
This page contains information about the International Network for Social Network Analysis (INSNA) and related subjects. Here you will find Social Networks information, reference sources and links to related home pages.
posted by Walter Logeman 7:04 AM permanent link
Publications
Index to a series of articles on networks.
posted by Walter Logeman 6:58 AM permanent link
Carnegie Mellon: Journal of Social Structure: Visualizing Social Networks Visualizing Social Networks
Linton C. Freeman
University of California, Irvine
ABSTRACT: This paper documents the use of pictorial images in social network analysis. It shows that such images are critical both in helping investigators to understand network data and to communicate that understanding to others.
The paper reviews the long history of image use in the field. It begins with illustrations of the earliest hand-drawn images in which points were placed by using ad hoc rules. It examines the development of systematic procedures for locating points. It goes on to discuss how computers have been used to actually produce drawings of networks, both for printing and for display on computer screens. Finally, it illustrates some of the newest procedures for producing web-based pictures that allow viewers to interact with the network data and to explore their structural properties.
~~~
A useful paper - and it mentions Moreno - but does not fully appreciate the point of knowing social networks from within as a group process.
posted by Walter Logeman 6:50 AM permanent link
THE GROUP AND ITS PROTAGONIST
This links to the section on Sociometry in a paper i wrote - psychodrama thesis. Has some useful Moreno quotes.
Posting this here as part of some research i am doing on social networks.
posted by Walter Logeman 6:28 AM permanent link
Monday, December 03, 2001
"Religious Wars" of Online GroupsA preliminary list of hardy perennial topics of debate among Online Groups practioners:
- web-based vs email-based
- threaded vs linear
- html email vs plain text
posted by Dan Randow 12:53 PM permanent link
Thursday, November 22, 2001
Pew Internet Report - Online Communities: Networks that nurture long-distance relationships and local ties. This report finds among other things that:"90 million Americans have participated in online groups
[...]
84% of Internet users, or about 90 million Americans, say they have used the Internet to contact or get information from a group. We call them "Cyber Groupies."
79% of Cyber Groupies identify at least one particular group with which they stay in regular contact.
49% of Cyber Groupies say the Internet has helped them connect with groups or people who share their interests.
Cyber Groupies try out different groups; the average Cyber Groupie has contacted four online groups at one time or another.
Use of the Internet often prompts Americans to join groups. More than half of Cyber Groupies (56%) say they joined an online group after they began communicating with it over the Internet. This includes those who joined traditional groups whose existence predated the Internet, such as professional or fraternal groups. In other words, Internet access is helping people join all kinds of communities, including those that are not exclusively virtual communities.
40% of Cyber Groupies say the Internet has helped them become more involved with groups to which they already belong."
posted by Dan Randow 12:42 PM permanent link
Steven Clift - E-Democracy, E-Government, Politics Online, Internet Strategies, Public Speaker and much more.. I met Steven at the recent SmartNet Workshops. Steven is an inspiring and knowledgeable pioneer of e-democracy and online participation in general. I recommend keeping a close eye on his activities. A good way to do this is via Democracies Online Newswire.
posted by Dan Randow 12:37 PM permanent link
Sunday, November 18, 2001
http://www.eroom.net/eRoomNet/Had another look at eRoom as I got spammed with ads for it.
Tried one of the rooms. Nice sense of place and similar functionality to Yahoo groups. BUT no email list!
posted by Walter Logeman 4:03 AM permanent link
Tuesday, November 06, 2001
bulletin board at "everybody" - Health Information for New Zealanderseverybody is an advertising-funded "consumer health information resource that is owned and published by MediMedia (NZ) Ltd. The product is distributed in print (free to New Zealand GPs), in practice management software MedTech 32 and Profile) and on the internet."
These bulletin boards are steadily active. The Welcome page has a brief description of the boards with the exhortation "Please show fellow forum members due care and consideration at all times."
It runs on Ultimate Bulletin Board.
They say "We have also set up a demonstration forum for members of established consumer support groups who would like to include the everybody bulletin board as part of their website."
posted by Dan Randow 2:12 PM permanent link
Friday, November 02, 2001
eDemocracy: NET DRAWS USERS INTO CIVIC ACTIVISM(following article from NewsScan Home Page)
The Internet may help reverse a decades-long trend toward civic apathy, particularly among younger adults, according to a new survey released by
the Pew Internet & American Life Project. "One of the big concerns that has existed since the mid-1960s is that young people were withdrawing from
civic life," says project director Lee Rainie. "It was just striking to see this technology that is enormously popular with young people is a vehicle by which they are engaging in the community at some level." The survey found that 84% of U.S. Internet users had logged on to contact or get information from an organization. Rainie acknowledged some of the groups "are pretty frivolous, built around rock stars or popular TV shows or sports teams." Still, he said, younger adults initially drawn by hobby or fan groups later migrate to other online communities. Professional and hobby groups were the most popular, each used by 50% of users, followed by
sports and entertainment fan clubs, local community groups and associations. (Wall Street Journal 2 Nov 2001) http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB1004625077911792480.htm
posted by Dan Randow 7:00 PM permanent link
Wednesday, October 31, 2001
post removedposted by Walter Logeman 3:39 AM permanent link
Monday, October 29, 2001
post in error - removedposted by Walter Logeman 5:54 AM permanent link
post in error - removed
posted by Walter Logeman 1:17 AM permanent link
post in error removed
posted by Walter Logeman 1:10 AM permanent link
Thursday, October 25, 2001
Collaborative learning for environmental management Landcare Research (a New Zealand Crown Research Institute) have a small team focused on research into approaches to conducting and making use of research in collaboration with the stakeholder communties. They have conducted extensive research into Action Research, Collaborative Learning and Integrated Systems for Knowledge Management (ISKM).posted by Dan Randow 7:58 PM permanent link
Tuesday, October 23, 2001
Masters of Communications (MComms) at Victoria University of Wellington New Zealand This could be the closest to a course in Online Groups that is available in New Zealand.posted by Dan Randow 4:21 PM permanent link
Thursday, October 04, 2001
Intelligent OrganisationsInteresting site which advocates & develops online collab, community & groups.
posted by Walter Logeman 12:37 AM permanent link
Wednesday, October 03, 2001
Darwin Online - Read Darwin -The Elements of E-Mail Style - ECOSYSTEM Relevant to posts in online groups as well as individual emails. This article describes basic common sense in writing emails. Like "write a useful subject line", some of these practices are not as common as they are sensible.To Scott Kirsner's list, I would add: use *appendices* in emails/posts. If you have more than a few paragraphs to convey, put them below your sign-off and write a covering note at the top in a human style.
posted by Dan Randow 2:44 PM permanent link
Monday, October 01, 2001
Yahoo! Broadcast Services Yahoo! has launched two webcast/web conferencing services.Quoting from Yahoo!'s press release at Busienss Wire ...
The Virtual Conference combines:
-- Audio, video, informational slides synched to presentations,
and a browser to view other meetings associated with the same
conference
-- Interactive tools -- Polling, Question and Answer, Document
Sharing, and Audience Survey
-- Registration, live attendance tracking, and post event
reporting on attendees
-- Archiving and Hosting
-- Pay-per-view (if applicable)
-------
The "Executive Communication Center" appears to be more focused on rich announcements.
posted by Dan Randow 3:01 PM permanent link
Forum One Extranet Services Forum One (who produce the recommended Online Community Report) have developed an online project space for project teams spanning multiple organisations. "Think of it as an enterprise version of Yahoo Groups (tm)", they say.
posted by Dan Randow 2:42 PM permanent link
Sunday, September 23, 2001
Wikipedia: HomePageWikipedia is a collaborative project to produce a complete encyclopedia from scratch. They started in January 2001 and already have over 11,000 articles. Anyone can contribute as well as edit any page.
The encyclopedia is being built with Wiki software, which allows text to be continuously updated by multiple parties.
posted by Dan Randow 2:51 PM permanent link
Training Reactions to Terrorist Attacks The results of Elliot Maisie's survey suggest an increased profile for online media as an alternative means of collaboration to air travel. In the immediate short term, synchronous media are the most popular choice. Teleconferencing and video-conferencing increased very quickly after the attacks on the WTC (presumably as a way of holding meetings). Instant messaging increased (informal discussion around the events?). Asynchronous collaboration (web-based) increased the least. This makes sense as it takes more time to build up and doesn't work quite so well for immediately pressing issues until it it established.
posted by Dan Randow 2:47 PM permanent link
Monday, September 03, 2001
webconferences.com"webconferences.com provides public and private asynchronous and synchronous learning and meeting solutions on the web. We provide a range of text, video, audio and application sharing technologies."
posted by Dan Randow 3:04 PM permanent link
Sunday, September 02, 2001
Oops - removed item and sent it to the GS Knowldege Management Weblog - where it belongs.posted by Walter Logeman 3:14 AM permanent link
Can Weblogs Create Community?
Yes. Web pages can - and weblogs are just that, but with easier access. Here is some evidence:
caterina.net
Net presence and links function like web discussion software as in the CODERS link below, but instead of sitting around a table as it were, we go - as caterina puts it - into each others living rooms.
posted by Walter Logeman 12:29 AM permanent link
Wednesday, August 08, 2001
CODERS FORUM: A List Apart: For People Who Make Websites an online community that runs on a good web-based platform.posted by Dan Randow 6:38 PM permanent link
Sunday, July 29, 2001
Quick Topic compared to Yahoo Groups - Quick TopicView the topic I just made!
posted by Walter Logeman 5:52 AM permanent link
http://www.quicktopic.com/
"For any one-topic group discussion, use Quick Topic instead of email! It lets people opt in or out, and keeps the whole conversation in one private place. Quick Topic is a super-easy single-topic web bulletin board that's also fully email-enabled: you can get and post messages via email. Use it to add community to your web site too."
I'll start on called Quick Topic compared to Yahoo Groups
posted by Walter Logeman 5:41 AM permanent link
Monday, July 16, 2001
Tomoye - Online architecture for human networks Tomoye provides services and a product (Simplify) for Knowledge Netoworks and communities of practice.posted by Dan Randow 4:58 PM permanent link
Tuesday, June 12, 2001
Byte > Column > weblog > Telling A Story > May 24, 2001 Telling A StoryThe Weblog As A Project-Management Tool
By Jon Udell
• The Uses Of Storytelling
• The Tools Aren't The Story
"Almost all the work I do is virtual and distributed, but lately I've been working in a project that's unusually virtual, as part of a team that's radically distributed."
Jon Udell has interesting things to say about all forms of groupware - though somewhat of a purist, he also manages to atually be in and generate community around his work.
posted by Walter Logeman 10:58 PM permanent link
Weblog 1.6 - Mother of Perl - WebReference.com
"Weblog is a simple browser-based interface for managing one or more RSS channels. It's also capable of generating HTML, Palm and WML files from the RSS file. Templates are included for HTML, Palm, and WML output so you can customize the output for your channels."
"Weblog can be used in several different ways. By default, Weblog will be installed so that the URL for its output will be http://www.yourdomain.com/webnews where webnews is the name of the channel and yourdomain.com is your domain name. This is a simple way to maintain an RSS channel whose output can be included via Server Side Includes."
This looks interesting, especially the way it generates various formats and that it is Open Source. I will also post up an article by Jon Udel re weblogs.
posted by Walter Logeman 10:47 PM permanent link
Sunday, June 10, 2001
UUA Email List User's Guide"This is the FAQ (list of frequently asked questions) for the email lists managed at uua.org, the internet host for the Unitarian Universalist Association."
This may be useful, it has quite a nice feel to it I thought.
posted by Walter Logeman 2:04 AM permanent link
Wednesday, June 06, 2001
Greymatter - Weblog/Journal SoftwareAlso seems like a useful very basic web based discussion forum. Lean clean simple.
posted by Walter Logeman 10:14 PM permanent link
Sunday, June 03, 2001
preeceJenny Preece, Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2000.
Reviewed by Chris Halaska
Good review of what sounds like a rambling book. Gives some insights and acknowledges the complexity of Group Ddesign.
posted by Walter Logeman 10:17 PM permanent link
Wednesday, May 23, 2001
David P Reed's Group Forming Networks Page Contains various links and articles about online groups and communities.posted by Dan Randow 3:05 PM permanent link
Monday, May 21, 2001
The Sociable Media GroupThe Sociable Media Group (at MIT) investigates issues concerning society and identity in the networked world.
We address such questions as: How do we perceive other people on-line? What does a virtual crowd look like? How do social conventions develop in the networked world?
Our emphasis is on design: we build experimental interfaces and installations that explore new forms of social interaction in the mediated world.
posted by Dan Randow 4:22 PM permanent link
Tuesday, April 17, 2001
Who Was Robert K. Greenleaf?
"Robert K. Greenleaf was an American original, an essayist in the tradition of Emerson. Back in 1970, he wrote a small essay called The Servant As Leader, which introduced the term "servant-leadership." That and other writings have influenced an entire generation of management experts and institutional leaders.
"Bob Greenleaf (1904-1990) spent his first career in management research, development and education at AT&T. After retirement, he began a second career teaching and consulting at institutions ranging from Harvard Business School to the Ford Foundation to scores of churches and not-for-profit institutions. During the tumultuous 1960s, Greenleaf tried to understand why so many young people were in rebellion against America's institutions, especially universities. He concluded that the fault lay with the institutions: they weren't doing a good job of serving, therefore, they were doing a poor job of leading.
"In 1970, Greenleaf wrote The Servant as Leader, a powerful little essay that continues to gain influence today. In it, Greenleaf described some of the characteristics and activities of servant-leaders, providing examples which show that individual efforts, inspired by vision and a servant ethic, can make a substantial difference in the quality of society. Greenleaf said true leaders are chosen by their followers. "
posted by Walter Logeman 5:29 AM permanent link
Sunday, April 15, 2001
Knowledge management is a solid concept that fell in with the wrong company. Software companies, to be precise.BY ERIC BERKMAN
"It's a gorgeous early fall day in northern California, but you'd never know it on the air-conditioned expo floor at the Santa Clara Convention Center. The KMWorld2000 trade show constitutes a full frontal assault on the senses: software vendors sporting corporate-logoed golf shirts pounce from all directions, promising knowledge management nirvana. All you need to do is spend megabucks to install their portal-vortal-intranet-extranet-search-engine-interactive-collaborative-commerce e-solution. Bob Armacost, director of internal knowledge management at Bain and Co., likens it to the swarms of souvenir hawkers who greet incoming boats of tourists. "You go to one of these shows and you feel like you're stepping off a cruise ship in the Bahamas," he says. Unfortunately, this is knowledge management (KM) today—a good idea gone awry. KM has fallen victim to a mixture of bad implementation practices and software vendors eager to turn a complex process into a pure technology play. The result: Like many a business concept, KM has evolved from a hot buzzword to a phrase that now evokes more skepticism than enthusiasm. "
posted by Walter Logeman 4:46 AM permanent link
Wednesday, April 11, 2001
Welcome to Your World of e-Learning!"SmartForce e-Learning is a comprehensive application infrastructure to support e-Learning initiatives in enterprises globally. Encompassing the largest body of e-Learning content in the world, and a fully integrated student environment, learning management system, and a range of custom content creation and publication tools, SmartForce e-Learning provides the architecture that over a thousand global enterprises are using today to implement e-Learning strategies to support their critical strategic business initiatives."
posted by Walter Logeman 3:27 AM permanent link
Sunday, April 08, 2001
Participate.com | News | Press Releases Participate.com Acquires Neodesic, Developer of Knowledge Sharing SoftwareChicago, IL - March 26, 2001 -
"Participate.com(TM) (www.participate.com) a provider of online community solutions for business, today announced it has acquired substantially all the assets of Neodesic, an Evanston, Illinois-based developer of knowledge sharing software. Neodesic’s technology allows users to exchange expertise and knowledge to increase sales force productivity, reduce customer service costs, and drive transactional liquidity."
posted by Walter Logeman 4:47 PM permanent link
