blogging

This post expands upon a talk I gave recently about using blogs as an academic research and thought development tool.

Identify interesting people in your field of study

Academic research is one part original thought and ninety nine parts identifying the limits of existing knowledge. This task can take up a good part of your time and when it comes to the Web identifying movers and shakers in your field can be frustrating and highly unproductive task.

Online communities: social networks and newsgroups

The first place to start when identifying interesting people in your line of study is the various social networks and interest groups on the Web.

As far as social networks go arguably the two most productive for finding people are Facebook and LinkedIn. Whilst Facebook is aimed at the casual user there is a diverse range of interest groups forming around nearly every topic imaginable. Don't despair at the variable quality of the content within these groups, the fact you are almost always dealing with real people makes the effort needed to browse through these groups worthwhile. Likewise whilst the business-centric LinkedIn lacks Facebook's group capabilities you'll be surprised how many people in your extended professional network share similar interests or could be of benefit to your research.

At the more traditional end of the spectrum newsgroups like those at Google Groups and Yahoo Groups are good places to to find clusters of people interested in your research. Most newsgroups are welcoming to newcomers, especially those that have something to offer, but it pays to passively monitor potential groups for a while in order to properly gauge the tone and style of the people involved. Whilst it may seem easy to charge straight in, it is hard to rebuild bridges if you start things off on the wrong foot. For example it is not good karma for your first newsgroup posting to read "can someone tell me everything about subject X".

A typical Google Groups group (click to enlarge)

Social bookmarking

There are a growing number of websites dedicated to storing and sharing your Web bookmarks.

The most notable of these is del.icio.us but there are others such as Diigo and Simpy that are also very good.

These online repositories assist your research by helping you find people with similar interests as yourself. This is achieved by browsing through the 'tags' people associate with their bookmarks, whilst some services can even recommend people who appear to share similar interests as yourself. Social bookmarking can also act like a human powered search engine by enabling you to track popular or new bookmarks on a specific topic. However the drawback of social bookmarking is that for the system to function at its full potential you must publish your bookmarks for the world to see. This maybe a problem if privacy is an issue with your research or you just don't like the idea of being 'on show'.

Formally recording what we have learned in the workplace is a worthwhile process that is often forgotten or not undertaken because there is no time or immediate incentive to do so. Web-based technologies such as wikis and blogs have demonstrated that enabling people to quickly publish and publicise their knowledge within their peer group is potentially a very powerful means of undertaking collaborative knowledge capture. This article explores how Drupal, an open-source content management framework can be used to facilitate this process in a community centric manner.

So much to know, so little time

A workplace such as an architecture practice generates a lot of 'on the job' knowledge which at the time can seem obvious or worthless but afterwards can be invaluable. Such knowledge can range from the most appropriate window detail to use in a certain situation, to the most efficient way of modeling that window detail in the office CAD package. Usually these little morsels of knowledge are never formally recorded because it is just more work that typically is not budgeted for, or acknowledged by, management. As a consequence finding an answer to one of the aforementioned questions becomes dependent on your ability to understand the workplace's knowledge topography (i.e. who knows what). But even though it maybe common knowledge in your workplace that Bob has a collection of decent window details or Andrew 'the CAD guy' will help you out, what happens when they are not available, or even worse quit their job to work at the more fashionable architecture practice across town?

The "Long Tail" is a term thrown around a lot by Internet entrepreneurs and marketeer/philosophers like Doc Searls as a means to describe the rediscovered sales base across all industries.

During the early and mid-90's the notion of the blockbuster was everything. Films like Jurassic Park and Independence Day epitomised this concept of putting all your eggs in a couple of well defined markets and selling it to the public like there was no tomorrow. However the blockbuster ignores the common fact that for every exclusive, overpriced item (be it fashion label or computer) there is thousands of smaller, cheaper alternatives that don't sell as well individually but combined make up an overwhelming majority of industry sales.

The low cost, distributed nature of the Internet has allowed these smaller brands to sell their wares on an equal footing with more established name-brands. This exploding market has been termed the 'Long Tail' and is the target of 99% of Internet shopping sites and the subject of this very good short video.

For ages Tim Woodill and I have been engaged in various email debates about 9/11 conspiracy theories. Anyone that knows Tim will know he loves a good conspiracy theory even if they are sometimes quite ridiculous. Last week thanks to a link to a story I emailed him he got entangled in a rather intense email battle with the author of this post on 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Tim spent a lot of time getting his arguments in a semi logical format and writing well thought out responses and questions to the author. They were so well thought out and written that I suggested he start a blog and he has done so, the ominously titled 'The Unpleasant Possibilities'. It only has one post up there but hopefully Tim uploads some of his previous writings and email exchanges so they can be appreciated (and ridiculed) by a wider audience than myself.