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Shakey JakeOriginally uploaded by jds293
I can’t remember exactly when I first saw Shakey Jake in downtown Ann Arbor. I’m almost certain it was within weeks of moving there in September 1997. I do know that I quickly noticed the reverence he inspired among Ann Arborites.
I saw him downtown often - sometimes every couple of days. [...]

The closing of Backfence this week has encouraged good discussion about hyperlocal content. Terry Heaton pulls some of the threads together in a post today.
He includes comments from Jeff Jarvis and Mike Orren, who point out the value of the content, but also the challenge of getting people to, first, read it, and, second, to [...]

I’ve been thinking about something Nico Flores wrote a few days ago:
Content is nothing on its own. It only exists as part of conversations — understood not in the usual ‘blogsphere’ sense of deliberation, but as shared concerns (not my term), concerns that we must partake in to be part of communities. When I buy [...]

Ethan’s seven minute history of the communities on the Internet is a classic. He presented it at the open of the session on social networking that he moderated at last week’s Beyond Broadcast convening. Read it here.
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Beyond Broadcast Notes: Ethan Zuckerman’s History of the Digital Communities”, url: “http://toddmundt.com/blog/2006/05/15/beyond-broadcast-notes-ethan-zuckermans-history-of-the-digital-communities/” });

Moderator: Patricia Aufderheide. Participants: Mark Cooper, Consumer Federation; Diane Mermigas, The Hollywood Reporter; Dan Nova, Highland Capital Partners.
Because of a minor issue (let’s call it Autosave), these notes are adapted from Jessica Duda’s excellent summary on the Beyond Broadcast blog. I summarize them here not to pass them off as my own but to have [...]

Tom Gerace (Gather.com), Thomas Kriese (Omidyar Network), Brendan Greeley (Radio Open Source), Rhea Mokund (Listenup.org) Moderator: Ethan Zuckerman (Global Voices, Berkman Center)
Brendan Greeley explained Radio Open Source’s approach to community media. The goal was to have the blog be the center, with the show as the outgrowth. Blogs are the new talk radio. Blogs [...]

Moderator: Peter Armstrong of oneworld.net; participants Skip Pizzi (Microsoft, and Radio World Magazine), Paul Jones (ibiblio)
Armstrong began by arguing, persuasively, that the BBC’s content initiatives (The Creative Future) is less a dialogue with the audience and more of a continuation of audience interaction that the BBC has offered before. Armstrong says that’s because the BBC’s [...]

I’ve spent some time digging around Gather.com and the Public Interactive Public Action beta and I’ve come away with somewhat more positive feelings about both.
I think the social networking aspect of these and other sites has less potential for public broadcasters - at least for now, while our main demographic is still late-GenX/Baby Boom. This [...]

via Haarsager: a pdf of the new book “The Wealth of Networks” by Yochai Benkler. In his post, Dennis quotes the Amazon “dust jacket:”
Social production is reshaping markets, while at the same time offering new opportunities to enhance individual freedom, cultural diversity, political discourse, and justice.
Thanks, Dennis!
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “@Reading: The Wealth of Networks”, url: “http://toddmundt.com/blog/2006/04/22/reading-the-wealth-of-networks/” [...]

Well, now I’ve said it. I’m not worried that God will smite me down; plenty of people don’t get it, which is partly why its life as a concept has been so troubled.
The concept is straightforward: social interaction has enlivened blogs and birthed chat and wikis; social annotation extends the concept of community, interaction and [...]