This week we're being presented with a 'tentative guide' which was formed through the work of 3rd year students in semester 1.
The four key areas are:
1. Professional Practice
2. Project Design
3. Know your platform
4. Know your audience
PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE:
- come together, brainstorm, keep notes of thought processes
PROJECT DESIGN:
- as yourself, as a producer: what would you want to listen to, be involved in, be engaged with?
- projects that are really successful use a lot of their own content which is entertaining and encourage people to want to participate.
- work in a perpetual beta state
KNOW YOUR PLATFORM:
Even when you manage to convince a healthy number of people to 'like' your content, your posts can get lost in the workings of facebook. The default 'News Feed' is based on an algorithm of what Facebook thinks you're interested in from your Facebook activity.
Strategies - creating events
Don't do mass posts - this angers people as they feel it's 'spamming'
UNDERSTANDING USERS:
Be realistic - "people are very busy creatures who simply don't have the time or the inclination to spend their few free hours putting together content for an online university project". Participation needs to be on an easy level. Monitor how they're going and cultivate that environment for them.
Ever felt like perhaps you were sharing TOO MUCH information on the internet?
I was type of person who used to constantly updates my status, tweets and posts up pictures without a second thought, until my friend Jess pointed out that he already knew anything I had to tell him, from my Facebook and blog. Oh dear.
As part of a promotion for Samsung's new 'social hub' services, which delivers all updates (twitter, facebook, myspace and email) into one place, they have released an interactive video entitled "Mr Know-It-All", which although humorous, makes us shockingly aware of the amount of information we do release into the public eye. It even includes little updates down the bottom so we can see exactly where Mr Know-It-All got all his information from - things that most of us do reveal in this information age.
To make the video even more enjoyable, it automatically inserts pictures of your friends (and yourself) from facebook as a bit of a joke. Here's the video I made, "staring" Verity Trott, Zach McSweeney, Jess Hallay and Michael Serratore.
Links are extremely important when it comes to the way we interact with blogs, as they allow responses from readers and to explore other sites, articles, information.
"Uses of Blogs" book - claim blogs have to be sorted by genre.
Technorati - classify, rate and list blogs, map out the 'blogsphere'
Jill Walker Rettberg - very well known in academic blogging circles, always in the sidebar of any academic's blog
Often different on internet to distinguish between 'genre' and 'medium' - aka 'hypertext'
Is a blog a medium or a genre?
'Just as an artist chooses to use oil paints instead of watercolour, or a director decides to work in film rather than television, a blogger decides to work with the constraints of the blogging medium'
Danah Boyd - bloggng software described as a tool
Blogs are a medium like paper, allowing people to write in a variety of formats - written, image, audio, video
BLOG TOOLS:
emphasis on change from static to dynamic.
in the beginning of the internet, before blogging software like wordpress, blogs had to be written on websites in HTML.
mosaic browser came out in 1993, allowing images to be embedded with text for the first time.
In 1994, Justin Hall developed a blog - upheld by Rettberg as the first blog - linked things in categories, arranged material in thematic areas
People use a blog like a portal.
CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS:
WordPress is a CMS - content management system. (In particular a WCMS - web content management system).
because of CMS, there is a seperation of layout from content, decentralised content production, without having technical staff to add that to a website.
1999 - Petus, then Blogger - Blogger hosted your blog for you, didn't need to host it yourself on your own server.
Around the same time Moveable Type was established as well as the predecessor of Word Press.
Rettberg - Growth and success of blogs due to a shift from reliance on codes to reliance on content.
MYSQL - now working with a database system.
Search feature allows for random access, otherwise have to navigate to it.
RSS feed - allows readers to subscribe.
permalink, becomes fixed, permanent, less likely to become affected by 'link rot'.
co-founders of blogger introduced the permalink in 2000.
Inspiration for inventing the world wide web - encyclopedia, small entries all interconnected, referring to each other.
Now, I know this might sound like I'm living in the stone age, but I don't have the internet at home. Until the MacBook program, I didn't even have a computer, and had to go across the road to my grandparent's house if I wanted to use it (and they were mostly out.)
Basically, the only way I've been surviving is through using the internet through my iPhone, and before that, the internet on my mobile. Sure, it isn't great, but it's better than nothing. I used to fight with my mum alot (still do!) and feel really isolated, so sometimes going on MSN messenger on my phone (or these days, facebook on my iPhone) was my only escape.
However, upon getting the Mac I learnt that I could use my iPhone as a modem.
:O
This was fantastic news, and everything was going great...Until it appeared that I'd used it a bit TOO MUCH, and my phone bill had skyrocketed.
Now, since I haven't been able to pay it (I need a job!) my phone bill has been cut off and I am completely disconnected.
No internet, no texting, nothing.
In this cyberage, it is the lonliest and worst feeling in the world. 
(plus it's so hard to do homework!)
As we discovered in Editing Media Texts last semester, it's a lot easier to self-assess your performance and participation if you're got a set of criteria to go by. It's something to hold yourself accountable to, and I guess that push is really what I need. Especially since I'm publicly putting it up on the internet. It's almost like wearing a t-shirt with a slogan on it, or scrawling something on your face.
So here are my guidelines for the semester - things I'm going to judge myself upon. In the words of 'It's Happy Bunny' - never judge somebody, until you know how.
So start your engines, gentlemen.
READ:
- Participate in all lectures and tutorials, by actually paying attention and engage with the information given. This will be assessed by level of engagement with the classes that I display in my blog posts.
- Do the readings, as well checking out the additional recommended sites, and doing extra research about things I don't understand.
WRITE:
- Post at least 4 blog posts a week, about a variety of different topics, while retaining my individual voice and character.
- Write in a variety of different ways, uploading different media to my blog, such as audio (or even video) journal responses.
MAKE:
- Create an engaging webpage using HTML, meaning something I can be proud of (as opposed to the 'dodgy' quality of my skills now.
- Strongly participate in the group project, taking responsibility for my share of the work and contributing innovative ideas.
There you go, kids.
