Paul's Web Space 2.1

Steve Cisler RIP

Steve Cisler passed away this week. He was an early pioneer in the community networking movement, and our paths crossed in the early 1990s, while he was working at Apple Computer and collaborating with CPSR on its Local Civic Networks initiative, and I was on the CPSR Board of Directors, contributing what I could to the movement.

I found this page from our old web site, which contains pieces he wrote for CPSR. It was funny to see a grad school paper of mine appear beside two that Steve wrote for CPSR; may a small bit of his genius have rubbed off on me. Actually, the first is a very good overview of the space as of 1993, and the second is his report from a 1992 CPSR roundtable meeting. Reading that report really brought back memories - I was lucky enough to have been at the meeting Steve described and hung out with many of the people who's work he chronicled.

A true leading light has rambled on.

Paul Jones from ibiblio broke the news on Twitter, and posted a thoughtful tribute on his blog. Andy Carvin tweeted confirmation, and later posted a link to a condolences blog set up to commemorate Steve's life. I'm still trying to figure out the significance of the fact that I learned of this loss via my new community of social media geeks on Twitter, where Andy Carvin's tweets provided a vivid, real-time commentary on the unfolding story (and are the extent of his public posting on the topic that I've seen). Then, digging deeper, I found other fellow travelers using the Tweetscan search engine.

Community networking meets Web 2.0? The light burns on.

Labels: apple, community, community networking, cpsr, internet

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Job: Online Community Intern at edweek.org

Do you use multiple social networking services, write for a blog, or lead discussions on web forums? How would you like to apply those skills as an intern for an online journalism operation, and gain valuable job experience at the same time?

Edweek.org, a national non-profit news Web site covering K-12 education, seeks an online community intern to help manage our online community and contribute to viral marketing and social networking campaigns on behalf of the organization.

Responsibilities include:

• monitoring comments and forum posts for inappropriate content;
• managing one or more social network profiles or channels;
• performing outreach to bloggers and social bookmarking sites;
• promoting a sense of community through participation and feedback;
• occasional web design or production tasks in support of these activities.

Qualifications: The position requires experience engaging with several social media applications and web communities, good writing and editing ability, basic HTML skill, a strong work ethic, and a highly developed sense of humor. Must be able to meet deadlines and work under pressure. Experience with CSS, graphic or multimedia editing, or blogging or content management system software a plus.

We welcome interns with an interest in social media, journalism/communications, education news and policy, and/or multimedia production. We are metro-accessible, a short walk from the red line in downtown Bethesda.

Please send resume, cover letter and samples/links via e-mail to: WebIntern@epe.org, and tell us where you saw the ad.

Labels: community, edweek, socialmedia, socialnetworks

   Link: http://www.edweek.org/

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Dennis McDonald - Personal Online Networking Strategy

I just stumbled upon a really cool-looking blog, called Dennis McDonald's Blog. Michael Stein (DC), a Facebook friend who's also interested in this stuff, linked to an interesting article Dennis wrote last month called "On Developing a Personal Online Networking Strategy" - his blog publishes notes in his Facebook profile (like mine does), Michael shared it in his profile, and it showed up in my feed. (After I finish this post it will appear in MY profile, and maybe spread a little further...cool.)

So anyway, Dennis McDonald's Blog has daily notes, links, tags, and a list of his recent longer thought pieces, on things like social networking make or buy decisions, adoption models, and use in emergency response, associations, and the intelligence community. I need to talk to this guy!

Labels: community, facebook, socialnetworks

   Link: http://www.ddmcd.com/managing-technology/on-developing-a-personal-online-networking-strategy.html

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Social Media Proliferation

I'm going a little crazy with all the different social media systems, accounts, applications, etc., which often seem to overlap with each other. I think this really became obvious when I started using Facebook more, where you can increasingly integrate all kinds of applications (including social media ones).

You post your status on Facebook, but you can also update your Twitter status via a facebook app, and both status statement (can) appear on your Facebook profile. One popular application on Facebook is called Causes, but you can also integrate your Change.org profile (which includes changes, organizations, politicians, etc., all things you can support via separate Facebook applications (Causes or US Politics).

On top of all that, Change.org and Facebook are two of many social networks. I probably don't even remember all of the social networks that I have joined, but of course this includes MySpace and LinkedIn, as well as Tribe, Care2, and the Omidyar Network. Managing all of these is a large time sink, and never really accomplished, and of course managing identity in general becomes ever more challenging base upon all of the aforementioned services and hundreds of others. Is OpenID the answer? I plan to start trying to figure that out soon. A speaker at Digial Media Conference I attended a few weeks ago predicted that one of the major coming trends in new media will be a merger or consolidation of social networks, and I don't know if this means actual combination of operations, or more likely, some networking solution that makes integration even more seamless than that afforded by Facebook apps - which is a very cool major step along the way, and I'm sure is poised to take it even further.

Facebook is the new LinkedIn, and Change.org, and Twitter, and Flixter, and Flickr, and....

Blogged with Flock

Labels: community, facebook, openid, socialmedia, socialnetworks

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