Alexia Blogs

Photo owned by janetmck (cc) 

Niall has some interesting things to say about the how discovery is the name of the game as opposed to web search. When connecting people on the web becomes de rigueur, yes, interesting problems like identity and trust will be solved, but that’s a long time away.

Even if the technology is available today, meaningful rollout to users beyond the pool of early adopters will take years. Ordinary folks are just coming to terms with booking flights online, watching videos on Youtube or Lolcat pic surfing. Habits are slow to change. Human nature is fascinating study in experiential toe-dipping. We love to try things out, but sweet coaxing can take hundreds of hours of meaningful web time.

Trust is not just a protocol that sits on the web and handshakes identified and verified partners; it’s a human act of faith. Sure, you can tell me you’ve solved a problem, but do I trust you enough to dip my toes?

People discovery is undoubtedly a driver for the future, but the calling death of Search at the cost of people discovery is short-sighted. Millions of people will continue to seek out and disseminate those search results found via Google or Live Search into the future, even when people discovery becomes a web reality. Habits, you see, are hard to break.

Okay, so I’m finally getting to do the meme that John passed onto me. I still have to do one that Pat tagged me with ages ago. I’m terrible at memes, and would rather read others. Pat, I’ll get around soon enough.

Me in six words:
Passionate - I tend to get worked up on topics I care about. Didn’t guess that, did you?
Geeky - I heart gadgety goodness and tech
Listener - Despite, my talkative nature I love to listen.
Stubborn - This sits beside driven. It really depends on the day.
Small - I’m the person in the gang who gets carded ALL THE TIME.
Cynical - Seen a lot, read a lot. You have to work hard to wow me.

So, Techcrunch is running with a list of the top bloggers based on Techmeme headlines. Nerds are obsessed with lists - oh, a tidy way of organising and deconstructing thought. Techmeme doesn’t represent tech bloggers on the ground. Rather it bolsters the position of commercial news blogging operations like Techcrunch, ReadWriteWeb and ZDNet. 

It’s a nice, incestuous relationship going here. Companies desperate to attract the right sort of attention of industry movers and shakers, VCs and press go these routes. Hoping and praying to be picked up by the biggies. Nowhere is this more visible than over on Techcrunch itself, where it runs an ad selling space on the site says ‘Easier that getting Arrington to link to your site’. How do you feel about the Techmeme-isation of tech blogging? Is it a good thing?

It seems that at the age of twenty-* coughs * I’ve started collecting wearable social objects from all over the place. Reminds me of my Guides days. I was a Nightingale. Figures, huh?

Now, if only I could get them mating and producing some interesting genetic freaks. How about a Filthy scandal where Enda creatively fluffs up when he believes he’s alone? Hmm. There may be more wearable social object goodness coming here soon. No, I’m not really all that creative.    

There’s a universal truth we’re all subject to, ask us to recommend a service or describe a real-world object and we revert to talking about the emotional impact that they have on us. On that favourite album - a stolen moment somewhere special. That little black dress - the first place you wore it and who you met. You get the idea. Events, people, services, even sources of information are branded in our memories and concentrated as a single idea - One Great Thing. Ask us to articulate and we default to those emotional brands. Recollection of a sensual ideal. Hot-iron buffalo, like. Sans pain and the acrid stench of burning flesh. 

Big companies are built on the back of feeding Johnny Customer emotional messages. Just look at companies with good examplers of One Great Things include Nokia’s “Connecting People”, Coca-Cola’s “Always” and Apple’s “Think Different”. Each of these simply sets out an emotional aspiration or a comfort source as a branding magnet. A personal connection so my Euro its merry way into their pockets.

I have always wondered what it would be like to deconstruct the concept of blog branding. To look at the emotional triggers that hook both bloggers and readers in perpetual cycle of write/read/comment. We all blog to a brand. A fixed emotional formula set by our mission statement - our One Great Thing. While we’re all motivated to express ourselves, at a deeper level, we all seek to sate a gap that blogging fills. These are not negatives, rather emotional spots that help us compose that message. Here are just a few I’ve been playing with:

For business blogs: it’s about shoehorning agenda, spin and self-promotion to gain and retain clients. They play on the disconnectedness of your life and/or business and promise a brighter day. They try to inspire confidence and control, to gain your trust. All in emotional way, of course. The boom-boom message is all about inspiring awe. 

For personal blogs: it’s all about establishing and retaining identity. People don’t want to be lost in a sea of blank faces - readers and writers instinctively know that. Yes, pseudonyms can be used, but the one-to-one connection is unmistakeable. Exposing personal meanderings is all about stamping a spot on the web and building out personal relationships or making them stronger. At the extreme end of the scale, you find that some personal blogs tend to pile on the shock quotient in an effort to distinguish themselves from the rabble. It’s all a matter of personal style, but the fingerprints are sometimes all too visible. The fear of losing identity, the search for acceptance and/or censure is never far behind.

For rights advocacy blogs: here, it’s all about the eternal struggle for rebalancing inequalities. Isolation caused by social exclusion often stalks the writer. Readers look for comfort, acceptance or from a diametric position, a cause to rally  against. In a funny kind of way, I find these some of these blogs tend towards combining shock and awe into a heady mix. They aim to separate readers and ask them questions about personal givens.

Where does your blog fit in? What deep triggers make you blog or return to regular reads? What does this do to your brand and how does it shape your One Great Thing message?

I didn’t take part in the Creative Camp talk entitled ‘Women In Technology: Grabbing the Blogosphere by the Balls’. Here are some of the ideas that I was planning to speak on. 

The title of this topic has two distinct and different strands. Two subtle themes that branch off and build into discussions all their own. Firstly, the participation of females in technical roles and the secondly, women in blogging. You see, these topics really are separate. Some women in technology keep blogs, but not all women in blogging are necessarily into technology. And why should they be?

Women in Technology: ”Participation rates are at X%, let’s try super hard to shoot for Y%. M’kay?!” 

Time and time again, the proportion of women working in technology is played like a game of percentages. The obsessive numbers game is demeaning to women already working in the field. Technology is the application of disciplined engineering to solve a problem. The impulse that kicks off the creative journey into technology is curiosity. Ask any child that pulls apart their toys why they do it, and they’ll retort to the effect of “to see what happens”. Curiosity, pure and simple. Adding rules about how the curiosity of children ought to to be doctored to meet numbers that make the PC faction feel good about themselves, amounts to wholesale societal manipulation. 

What we ought to be doing as a society is encouraging children from all walks of life and all socio-economic backgrounds to question known precedents, be it in Politics, the Arts or Sciences. Questioning known principles and pulling apart the systems that we use to deliver education, justice, parenting, engineered solutions and every other convention of life pushes us into new ground. Challenging places, past perceived boundaries. This is motivated not by chalking up numbers on a gender scoreboard, but by opening paths for the children of today to pursue.

So, what’s the Secret Sauce? It has to include the provision of positive role models, quality education from tot to teen and community support mechanisms. There’s no easy solution to build a generation of children willing to challenge perceived norms. Curiosity ought to be nurtured. I want to see generations of engineers. Engineers of political science, engineers of education, engineers of parenting, engineers of software development. Is not the core practice of engineering the solution of problems? Does society not deserve the cold eye of reason bent on solving inequalities? Don’t close the problem of under-representation of women in technology into a neat little silo. Hasn’t that been done enough? Are you complicit?

Women and Blogging: “You Need To Be Like X To Be Taken Seriously”

Blogging is an act of expression just like fashioning a sculpture, telling a story or dancing the samba. We each possess our own unique style. Some like to unearth the fallacies that people artfully hide to get on in life, while others help us celebrate the little things in life - the importance of detail. 

Expression is all about externalising your beliefs. Those bells that sing to you, help your moral compass, and guide your humour. Stylistically, I like to blog neutral. I don’t harbour any ambition to follow a herd. I simply want to write material that I’d love to read. And isn’t that the primary motivation of a writer? And, returning to my geek instincts, that love of taximonising behaviour, isn’t blogging just a kind-of writing? 

But, nowadays, there are talking heads telling women to assume different voices so we can be taken seriously as writers. They tell us to adapt our commentaries, so they fit little boxes of masculinity. Just so the outside world will take us seriously. Is not this the greatest act of advocacy for separating the gender roles of writers? For sexism in a Wordpress edit box? As we brave our way deeper into the gender question, shouldn’t we question what why certain sectors of our society are advocating that women use soapbox artifices when expressing themselves? Why the nanny state advice? What’s in it for them? 

Edit: Coherence fix 

I have to say, I’m really enjoying the commentary and analysis that Damien and Bock are providing on the Ó Searcaigh case. They are both doing a very fine job. They really are duking it out for the top-dog blogger analyst award on the story. I’m finding it difficult to choose my fav. What about you? Who’s impressing you more?

I met so many great people last Saturday night for the first time - Stephen, Stewart, Ken, Pat, Aoife, Jonathan, ManicMammy, Suzy, Nialler9, Twenty and lots more. Met lots of older pals too. Like Marcus, Paul, Clare, Martha, Conor, Maryrose and Elly and many more.

Apologies for the video problems. I’m available to mess up your Christenings, 50th Birthday parties and Wedding dos too.

Edit: I love this pic of me and Clare. Oh, and Damien - you are the super dooper star. You were very sharply dressed.

Edit 2: I knew I would forget someone… Hello James! Was really nice to meet you, finally..

I wonder what happen if an asteroid hit the Alexander Hotel tonight? Would anyone really notice if 400+ bloggers kicked the bucket? Excusing the big, smoking crater near Trinity, of course.

I’ll be going along, so see you there.

Update: So Young Fine Gael are distancing themselves from threats of a lawsuit. Eoin has commented below to confirm this.

Legal salvos were bound to kick off in this incident. Blogger Eoin Brazil commented on Damien’s blog saying:

“Damien, I heard both sides of this particular story and I believe its you who is overreacting. I’d love to say that they’re members of YFG but as ever you’re facts are incorrect. I’d also like to say I’m not one of the two.

I’d like you to retract your comments about YFG and UL YFG in particular or you will see the legal side for libel for taking the good name of one of UL societies into another one of your paranoid rants.

Please feel free to moderate this comment. I believe information should be free, do you ?”

This comment appears to suggest that UL’s Fine Gael branch may be making the first move, by threatening Mr Mulley with legal action. Is this true? Are UL’s Young Fine Gael branch going legal on this? I’m confused.

Where does the truth lie? Legal remedy may be the only option as this stage. This will probably run and run. It’s a sad incident that will not doubt tarnish Irish Blogging Week. I hope that the air is clear by Saturday night.