IT & Tea - Weblogging Presentation

I attended a presentation on weblogging today. Rich suggested I attend as he couldn't promise a properly complete recap :-)

Speaker: Terry Huwe - Director of Library and Information Resources- UC Berkeley

It seems everywhere you look these days, people are talking and thinking about Blogging. But just how relevant is Blogging? Is it just another "transitional" technology, or is it here to stay? Terry Huwe will explore these questions, covering what Blogs are, how they work, and what their value points are. This talk will explore both the "big picture"--how Blogs fit into the "information ecologies" of today's organizations--as well as the basic technical skills you need to get started. Attendees will learn what the top Blogging products are and how to find out more about them, what's new and emerging in the Blogosphere, and how to make strategic, informed decisions for evaluating Blogging as an information management tool.

The presentation focused on the potential that weblogging has for organizations, such as research organizations, libraries, institutions and corporations, more than individuals. Apparently weblogging has been the hot topic at the last two "Internet Librarian" conferences and the most recent "Computers in Libraries" conference. As Mr Huwe said, weblogs provide fast movement of content to the web without touching a server. "What's not to like?"

Some interesting points from the presentation:

• Weblogs work well in conjunction with "fixed" sites, i.e. as one part of a stable, web-based service.

• Organizational weblogs can provide highly focused sites, built on the fly.

• Breaking news stories can be posted quickly; Mr. Huwe's team chose Radio UserLand as their weblog platform because of its built-in news aggregator.

• Information management platforms are only useful if they meet the needs of the users in the local information ecology. Mr Huwe was hoping that more people in his organization would pick up on weblogging but they seem to have a very email-focused culture and fewer people have started weblogs than he hoped.

• Information professionals interested in blogging need to survey the information ecology and plan strategic services that blogging can provide.

• For libraries, weblogs can provide: quick alerts to patrons, news aggregation, repository management.

• Blogging can be a useful add-on to robust web sites, but probably won't replace them.

• In our computer age, with the web so popular, library card ownership is at an all-time high. 72% of the citizenry of San Francisco has a library card.

• Weblogs provide for "guerilla information architecture" and "loosely cupled knowledge networks". Employees of an organization can take a good idea and run with it, work off of other people's ideas, self-publish. Blogging fosters "Communities of Practice" which help leverage expertise by improving "findability" of information. Reading what others publish can spark creativity.

• The people (not the weblogs) are the resource . Relationships and information are deeply entwwined.

• Blogs provide a perfect fit for news organizations, such as newspapers, looking for ways to publish information between additions. The Sacramento Bee online addition provides an excellent example. The old system used to be "Here's our news; take it or leave it". That's changing.

Mr. Huwe gave a few examples of places where weblogging is "seeping into corporate culture'. I was quite interested in these, as I've been talking about this sort of possibility for two years now.

Verizon tracks its competitors using news aggregation feeds and RSS.

Daimler/Chrysler monitors production line problems using laptops on the production line — and weblogs.

One of the large insurance companies tracks discussion threads about client needs using weblogs; these help the sales force to remember "past lessons learned in relationship management.

Finally, Mr. Huwe closed with the following guidelines for setting up weblogging in an organization:

• Know your user population
• Keep it simple
• Be distinctive
• Share your personality, but
• Keep it Professional

About the Speaker:

Terry Huwe is Director of Library and Information Resources at the Institute of Industrial Relations Library, at the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to his appointment in 1989, he worked for private law libraries in San Francisco, California. He is a frequent presenter at Internet Librarian USA and Computers in Libraries. Since 2002, he has been a Columnist with Computers in Libraries magazine, covering Digital Library Issues, and has also been a frequent contributor to ONLINE magazine. He is President of the Librarians Association of the University of California, which is formally charged to advise the University administration on matters of library policy.

IT & Tea - Weblogging Presentation ( in category WebTech ) - posted at Thu, 13 Jan, 21:00 Pacific | «e»