Live (finally) from Vienna

Having failed to get a wireless signal and having some IP zigzags, I’m finally online in Vienna. Dave Weinberger has the fullrundown of participants and photos. (Hint to family: photo of me here.)

To catch up, yesterday I enjoyed hearingDave Weinberger talk about one of blogging’s unique social contributions –“multisubjectity” — its power to bridge/meld objectivity and subjectivity and create a new social reality. Marysia Cywiñska-Milonas‘s coverage of Polish “community” blogging touched the same theme; she believes 100,000 Polish blogs are creating a “third place” beyond home and work, a space where people can share their experiences and commune.

The key part of my presentation was how blogs can help overcome coordination problems, ie help groups of people decide to do the same thing. We face a coordination problem vis a vis evening festivities — the leafy park across from our hotel is having a beer blast. Seems like a great place to end up.

Live blogging: biologist and former journalist Jeremy CXXX, who asks that his organization not be named/linked, is going to talk about the the role of blogging in PR. His job is to improve the public’s awarenesss of his institution and its mission. Sounds like a fun horror story. “We make very poor use of our web site…. as a marketing and media tool, it leaves a lot to be desired.” Single image of 75 megs image on the home page!!! No bookmarking, since all in frames. Design in front page, then send to IT people, who would upload once a day. If you found a typo, you had to wait a day to see it corrected. This was a year ago. Monolithic IT department, battled his efforts to blog. They said: “You are going to publish to the web yourself? Can’t be done.” “We hate the IT department, we do everything we can to make their lives irrelevant.” So he created a blog, and was elated.

Describes the horror of posting an article on their “corporate” site. Now has an official public awareness blog: getting news about new boss took three weeks to get posted. Took him ten minutes to get it on his public awareness blog.

“Why was there so mmuch resistance to idea of using a blog? Insecurity and lust for power…. They have captured the servers and the network admin, and they are threatened by the idea of letting people do things. There are, I am sure, honorable exceptions, but I have not met them. Rigidity is in exactly the wrong place.”

The new DG arrives in August, and he may be an ally, since he was pissed that it took three weeks for the site to show his news. (What traffic does the site have?)

Department of civil engineering for Dresden University, from 300 new students at the beginning of the century… down to 60. How to market? Hired Xx. As a journalist, first instict to write articles about the latest results of ongoing research. Blogs have the fresh spirit that I wanted Civil Engineers to have. Launched the Baublog, a tool for quick daily information.