The 2004 Tsunami; what other "nobodies" accomplished

Fellow nobody Lee Hopkins, on his Better Communication Results blog, wrote yesterday about "How to create a global project management tool in 72 hours."

He was writing about the International Association of Nobodies, of course, but let me share the tale of another Web 2.0 meme-storm.

(Raganites and other Web 2.0 skeptics, you might want to sit up and listen.)

Within hours of the Southeast Asian earthquake and tsunami, three bloggers started Skyping, wondering what they could do to help. They turned to social media -- a Blogger blog, a wiki, Skype, and IM (all of it free, or nearly so). Within three days they had attracted 100,000 visits and 50 volunteer bloggers, wiki specialists, networkers. Within eight days, their SEA-EAT Blog & Wiki had attracted over 1 million visits, and 200 volunteers -- all unpaid, with no "organization chart" or "director" or "fundraising staff". They just did it.

Dina Mehta's early posting on the topic (5 days after the event), her later personal account and this Information Week article are well worth a read, if you would like to know more.

I first heard this story from Dina herself at last year's Reboot conference, and blogged about it in "We don't have the tools is OUT as an excuse." And I still believe that (and Web 2.0 skeptics should wake up to this): if three Bombay bloggers who had never met each other can form a distributed 200-volunteer charity information network in eight days... think what rich companies and associations can do.

Technorati Tags: nobody, International Association of Nobodies, SEA-EAT blog, Dina Mehta, Web 2.0

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 05:14pm in International Association of Nobodies, Reboot 7.0, Smart Communities, Social Tools, Tsunami | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (2)

Is Wikipedia fundamentally flawed? Sure, but it's no less useful for it.

Is Wikipedia fundamentally flawed?

Andrew Orlowski, writing at The Register, believes Wikipedia to be Utopian, and cites Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales' own post that some entries are "nearly unreadable crap".  PR colleague Jim Horton adds:

"The wikipedia was born of a romantic notion that people would put aside self-interest for the greater good. It doesn't work that way for long: It didn't work that way for wikipedia."

Friend and PR blogger Eric Eggertson disagrees:

"It may not be perfect, but it's good enough for a lot of people."

I'm with Eric on this. Let me explain why.

Yes, Wikipedia is flawed. Despite the neutral point-of-view policy, bias inevitably creeps in: one either thinks Intelligent Design is lunacy or doesn't; either way, it's hard to keep one's bias out. Either in the entries one makes, or the entries one does not make.

And inaccuracies float in: I wrote (most of) the article Tallulah Bankhead. In it, I accidentally created a dead link -- of course, I also brought my biases, since she's a cousin whom I admire.

But here's why Wikipedia works, despite the flaws.

1. While "anyone" can create or edit a Wikipedia article, very few do. My notes are in storage (my study is, as I write, being jackhammered to make a bigger study for my partner and me), but Jimbo Wales, speaking at Reboot 7.0, said that just a few hundred authors are responsible for more than 75% of Wikipedia's content. That "community" may not know everything but a) they know how to check sources and b) are committed to eliminating inacccuracies and bias.
2. The community is good at correcting bias. My views of George W. Bush would never pass the NPOV test; Karl Rove's views wouldn't either. But if any of us posted with a biased point of view, the balance would be restored in just minutes.
3. A history is kept of every edit on every subject. The feature is an excellent way to learn precisely what are the biases on a given subject.
4. Finally, the damned thing is free, easily accessed, and is rapidly approaching 1 million articles. That's just in English: there are also articles in Basa Sunda.

Would I write a scholarly paper based on information in Wikipedia? Of course not, no more than I would write one based on articles in Encyclopedia Britannica. But for most people, most of the time -- it's more than good enough.

Eric Eggertson prompted this post.

Technorati tags:
Wikipedia
Knowledge Management

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 10:25am in Knowledge Management, Reboot 7.0, Social Tools | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (1) | TrackBack (1)

More Reboot 7.0 Notes: Loïc Le Meur on the European Blogosphere

I know, I know, Reboot 7.0 has been over for three days, and few notes from me.

On Day 2, Loïc Le Meur, the European guy for SixApart (makers of my fine blogging platform), gave us a run-through on the state of the European Blogosphere.

Or, rather, tried to. Loïc is one of these super-enthused speakers who, in the flurry of thinking faster than he can speak, tends to start down one fascinating trail, only to abrubtly choose another. Five trails followed to completion would be great content; 10 trails started and abandoned is like going to a tapas bar and not being allowed to eat.

Further, he was using his wiki as both the presentation to us and speaker notes for himself, which always means a lot of cursors flying around the screen, three-four pages in quick clicking succession, only to have the wrong page show up. Followed by furious back-clicking and re-clicking. I don't know about the rest of the room, but by the end, I was a twitching bundle of nerve.

But... he had some cool notes to impart.

The best way to get at them is to visit his European Blogosphere Wiki, where you can, of course, make corrections and additions.

A few notes:

• Note the differences in the number of bloggers in different countries: 3 million in France, 600,000 in the Netherlands, and 5,000 in Denmark. He may be right (after all, he sells blog platforms), but the numbers seem hinky to me. Accepting his arguments about France, for now, it's still hard to imagine there are 120 times more bloggers in the Netherlands (or 120 times fewer in Denmark): the countries are somewhat similar in population, cultural attributes, and adaptation of technology.
• He argues France is heavy in bloggers largely because of French culture and tradition of debate. Well, I don't know if you've been in an Irish pub lately, but if tradition of debate were a criterion, Ireland should be thick with bloggers. Mystery to me.

Le Meur gave us several case studies. The one that caught my eye was that of La Fraise, the brainchild of Patrice Cassard.

Cassard likes tee-shirts. Likes odd tee-shirts. He started showing his best ones on his site... and people started asking where they could buy them. A problem, since they were custom-made.

Now, most people would rapidly come up with the idea of starting an online tee-shirt store. But Cassard goes further: he lets readers come up with designs, and lets readers vote on the ones they like best. Cassard creates the winners in limited, and pricy, editions (and a few lucky voters get theirs for free).

And who generates the buzz? The lucky tee-shirt wearers who now have begun sending Cassard photos of them in their shirts.

How quirky is that?

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 03:57pm in Bloggers, Blogging, Blogging for Benjamins, Blogging for the Sheer Hell of It, Citizen Journalism, Reboot 7.0, Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (2) | TrackBack (0)

Reboot: We Don't Have the Tools is OUT as an Excuse

Yesterday and today were given over to the Reboot, a European meet-up of the mash-up of society and communication and technology (with a fairly strong tilt to technology). Two days of bang bang bang sessions punctuated networking, getting acquainted and getting to grips (sort of) with where micromedia is leading us.

I didn't blog directly, but many others did (not all results will be about the conference but pick around). I do better waiting for the serendipity to happen.

I'll post highlights as I get my head around them. Here's the first in a series:

We don't have the tools is OUT as an excuse

Dina Mehta's presentation used as its case example the South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog Dina helped organize. Incredible. The team used free (or nearly so) collaborative tools (Skype, IM, IRC) to put together a blog that attracted 1 million visits in the first week. And as the contributions and comments to the blog began (quickly) to become unwieldy, they created sub-blogs, and then a wiki to categorize the information.

The team was flat, without titles, with immense passion and, apparently little recourse to sleep. What's key here is that drive and brains and a willingness to collaborate, not expensive tools and committees, created this site.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 11:05pm in Bloggers, Blogging, Blogging for Benjamins, Blogging for the Sheer Hell of It, Citizen Journalism, Communication, Copenhagen, Reboot 7.0, Technology | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (0) | TrackBack (2)