RConversation

Blogger Corps?

At various sessions of Bloggercon III, I opined that we need to think more about how blogging tools and the blogging process can be used by the non-profit and activist community - not only in the U.S. but around the world.  This is not merely a matter of blog-evangelizing to the uninitiated.  It's also about adapting blog tools and blogging techniques to the needs of people who want to go beyond online conversations to real-world action. For early blog-adopters, blogging was an end in itself. For the activist community, blogging has to be an effective means to a concrete end. 

In the final wrap-up session of Bloggercon III, I suggested that socially conscious members of the blogging community (of all political persuasions) might want to organize a "Blogger Corps." Through it, bloggers could donate their time to help poorly funded activists or non-profit groups to figure out what blogging tools are right for them, set up blogs, and develop effective blogging strategies. 

The response to this idea was enthusiastic. A few people have contacted me, asking how they can help. I do not have any detailed master plan. I just came up with the idea at B-con and blurted it out. So I turn to the blogosphere (and the non-profit world) for suggestions: what do you think would be the most effective and efficient way to organize a Blogger Corps? Please share your ideas in the "comments" section.

B-con: "Newbies" postmortem

I was relieved to see that the room for my Newbies session at Bloggercon had most of the seats filled, despite the fact that superstars Adam Curry and Jay Rosen were leading sessions at the same time.

A newbies session at Bloggercon was not easy to plan for - or to lead.  The discussion could go in a number of possible directions, depending on who was in the room. As it turned out, of the 50 or so people in the room, we had a fairly even balance of total newbies, people who have been blogging for less than a year, people who have been blogging for more than 2 years, and developers who were there to hear more about what users want.

While some people, I think, would have liked the session to be more of a blogging tutorial, that  was not our mission. So I pointed people to resources I've been collecting as a linkroll on this blog, including a Wiki of blogging resources (which I hope everybody out there will help build as a resource for newbies and not-so-newbies alike).

We did need to deal with a few basic questions like: what the heck is trackback? Not everybody in the room knew what RSS is, so we spent a little time on that, too.

One person asked a good question: why spend one's precious time blogging rather than doing something else?  Bloggers in the room concurred that a good blog requires time. It requires the desire to communicate SOMETHING, with some sense of who you want to communicate that something TO and WHY (even if the "who" is only one other person).

In my observation, as blogging moves from techies and early-adopters to a broader range of people, the current group of blog-newbies is less interested in blogging for blogging's sake than in blogging for a specific purpose.  They want to get an activist or political message out, communicate better with their boyfriend, collaborate more effectively with colleagues, or whatever. 

This may mean that toolmakers might want to think about targeting different kinds of toolsets for different kinds of purposes.

People in the room said they started blogs (text as well as photo) for a number of purposes:
- to enhance their long-distance romantic relationship
- to facilitate communication and cross-departmental collaboration within their company or organization
- to do customer support
- to organize and promote a local soccer program
- to build an information community around a news service (see the BBC's islands project)

What do users want?
- Simpler tools - all blog tools have their pros and cons. Nobody seemed to feel that any tool enabled them to do everything they wanted to be able to do - or at least, not nearly as easily as they would like, if they can figure it out, which ofen the non-techie can't.
- Better support. Much frustration about support. "One place to go for HELP!'
- No more gap in user-friendliness between hosted tools and tools you have to install on your own server. (Developers pointed out this will be really hard to do.)

What did I take away from the session?

- Blogs are a communication tool. You must first have something you want to communicate, and a know who you want to communicate it to.
- Blogging takes work. It won't change your life or your organization or your colleagues magically with no work.
- That said, many organizations could benefit tremendously from using blogs (and RSS) to enhance what they do.  It remains difficult to convince many blog-skeptics or overworked people. Confusion and frustration about tools is sometimes a reason.  That said, blogging is now starting to gain enough public attention that more people are curious about it and more receptive than ever. This is a great time to bring blogging to newbies.

I wish we had more time to delve into the nuts-and-bolts of how one brings blogs to existing organizations, how you fit blogging into existing work patterns, and how you make blogging work in a company, campaign office, non-profit, or whatever. That could be a whole session in itself.

B-con: Blogs & making money

Doc Searls is leading this session.

2 topic areas:
- making money WITH blogs.
- making money BECAUSE of blogs.

2nd topic first:
- how blogging increases your market value & credibility - exercising and enlarging your authority.

Many of the people in the room are now in the businesses that they're in because of blogs. Some of them claim to be making money. Many others have gotten more business through blogs.

One person's advice for making money with your blog: "be as small and niche-like as possible."

Partisan blogs make money much more easily than blogs that strive for balance and a range of views.

Dave Winer: "We're all selling ideas. We're not asking for money for ideas."

Blogs are the new way for people to do business networking and establish reputations. Which leads to value, which can potentially lead to profits.

One of the things that blogs are "selling" is connection.

Doc: "Blogging is an incredible vehicle for making tipping points happen really fast."
"What we're doing is not branding. It's about who we are as people."

One person points out: The value of paid content is going down. What you're selling is the connections and more intangible things.

Jay Rosen: If I were a businessman I would invest the knowledge bloggers gained by buidling their blog. Because bloggers know how to build trust and reputation. That has to be worth something.

Doc: "blogging is the most humanizing thing that's ever happened to Microsoft."

B-con: Politics session

Ed Cone is leading the session.

"I'm interested in hearing from you what worked, what didn't work, what's going to work next time."

"The local is where it's happening."

A lot of political blogs are still too top-down, talking to the supporters but not allowing the community to talk back adequately. 

Problem w/ Dean campaign: had trouble getting the online-based groups working well with the more longstanding traditionally-organized groups.

Rural/Urban digital divide problem.

"We have a tendency to talk to ourselves, on both sides of the political spectrum, and its almost like an echo chamber."

"We forgot about the rural people."

The most effective online tool of this campaign was E-MAIL.

CBS "memogate" fiasco had a real impact on the election, showing how one uses blogs as alternative media to influence the discourse and thus impact politics. (see www.ratherbiased.com)

One person makes an interesting point: political blog posts were most effective when they included "what you can do" action points in addition to opinion & information.

The energy for a campaign blog must come from the top - the candidate - but the blog should equally be the voice of the whole campaign and the people working for it. (BUT: If the personality and voice of a campaign member who writes for the blog dominates, then that takes focus away from the actual candidate.)

"A blogger is just an amplifyer for a message."

Question: "could it be that blogging simply doesn't scale well for a national campaign?"
Maybe blogs work well for local campaigns but not for national campaigns.

The Deanblog was good for raising money but it did not do well in reflecting the voice and vision of the candidate himself.

Issue: the candidate as a product.
"The Democrats totally lost the branding war."
Nothing in the blogs addressed this or helped people understand what was happening.

The politicians who were "blogging" (usually via proxy by staff members) "sounded like a press release"... which made it not worthwhile if the candidate wasn't really going to be there.  The blog's value is an "authentic, actual voice."

"A political campaign is better at controlling information than at disseminating it."

Scott Rosenberg: There's an elephant in the room:  50% of Americans somehow think that the U.S. forces found WMD in Iraq. What kinds of authorities can we be rebuilding to protect ourselves? 
"There are powers who will prey on us if we don't create our own authorities for distributing facts."

Many people agree that the most important thing is not to create new online organizations, but to bring blogs and other online organizing tools to existing groups with their existing networks. The challenge is how to make these things more user-friendly for groups that are not currently online.

In the end, it's not about technology but the substance and the message. The thing is how can you use these tools more effectively next time to get those factors better distributed and motivate your base.

Robert Cox: says maybe a top-down approach is more effective in politics, and maybe blogs just don't lend themselves to that approach.

B-con: journalism session

Led by Scott Rosenberg of salon.com (his preparatory notes for the session are here).

I'm updating & re-saving this post as the conversation unfolds.

Issues raised by people in the room:

What is "standard journalistic practice"?  Is it still relevant? Does one continue to exist and should it in this new era of blogging?

Issues of journalistic standards: the process of journalism vs. the tools and technical formats.

Question of objectivity: is it relevant? Or should we focus more on transparency and knowing where your biases are?

The line between journalism and advocacy and p.r.

Is there something special about journalism? Should those aspiring to be doing journalism use a specific label showing they adhere to certain "standards" - whatever those are?

One person from a p.r. company: "blogs communicate the interest of actual users and readers."

How can blogs maintain their independent voice as an alternative media and avoid the mainstream media's insularity .

How blogging is helping to bring out the individual voices of journalists.

The tools for newsgathering are now on everybody's computers. So how do you use those tools in ways that are responsible.

Question of bloggers rehashing internet sources and not doing original "legwork" - the difference between blogging and news reporting?

Local blogging: covering issues in local communities that local mainstream media simply isn't covering.

Value in the meta-analysis of being one step away and not having "stockholm syndrome" relationship to the people you cover (example as Pentagon journalists).

We should not be looking at the situation as "either-or" but rather as a mesh. How blogs and professional journalism can complement one another.

From the AP's Jim Kennedy. Blogs show that finally the audience wants to talk back. This is a great opprotunity for the media and its audience to hold conversations. The zero-sum, "us vs. them" is not useful.

Scott: maybe the better way to look at it is "it's just us."

Dave Winer: making generalizations about bloggers is not useful.

Common problem for both bloggers and pros: the difference between opinion and newsgathering.

Jay Rosen: its through arguments and debates that many people get interested in certain news stories.

J.D. Lasica - insularity of mass media vs. inclusiveness of blogs. secrecy of the news room vs. transparency of blogosphere. citizens must start taking back our media and one of the ways we can do this is through blogs.  (see "ourmedia.org")

Bloggercon has begun

Dave Winer is about to give the opening benediction at Bloggercon III.  Go here for the webcast of conference proceedings, etc.

I'll be leading the newbies session shortly.

There is an IRC on freenode called #bloggercon.