Recent Changes Camp 2011

We hosted a RecentChangesCamp at the University of Canberra these past three days. It was an OpenSpace unconference focused on wikis and online collaborative practices, following the success of the RCC2010 event, and RecentChangesCamps held in other parts of the world. The main characteristics of the event were that it was free to attend, open to anyone, with a program determined on the day by the participants. The aim of the event was to draw together people interested in Worldwide Iterative Knowledge Involvement or wikis (we made that acronym up btw), to discuss and share knowledge, and eat and socialise in a friendly face to face setting.

Participants

1. Laura Hale - University of Canberra
2. Leigh Blackall - University of Canberra
3. Jutta von Dincklage - Cancer Council Australia
4. Rob Fitzgerald - University of Canberra
5. John Vandenberg - Wikimedia Australia, University of New England
6. Jani Patokallio - Lonely Planet
7. Rose Grozdanic - Australian Flexible Learning Framework
8. Michael Coghlan - TAFESA, NewLearning
9. Kirsty Sharp - Tasmanian Polytechnic
10. Tom Worthington - Australian National University
11. Diane Phillips - University of Canberra
12. MarkDilley - AboutUs
13. SatuSuro - Wikipedia editor - Western Australia
14. Chriswaterguy - Wikipedian & co-founder ofAppropedia
15. Adam Jenkins - University of South Australia
16. Billinghurst - no organisation - Fri - Sat for parts of days, ?Sun.
17. Marghanita da Cruz - Ramin Communications - definitely attending all day Friday
18. Stephan Ridgway - Sydney - Travelling down Friday, definitely attending Sat. and Sun Morning
19. Robyn Jay - Free
20. James Neill - University of Canberra - attending all day Friday
21. Ken - Lonely Planet
22. Mark Spain

Social Media Workshop - University of Canberra

Wanting to get a handle on all this blogging, wikis, podcasting, twitter, and other social media, once and for all? Want to establish a professional web presence for your work? Want to better manage information available online?

A social media workshop will be held on 13 and 21 December, facilitated by Leigh Blackall, at the University of Canberra - Research Education Program. The workshops will explain the workings of social media and get you going with it all.

The first session will run on 13 December from 9.30am till early afternoon in Building 11, room A49

The second session will run on 21 December from 9.30am till 12.30 - a morning only session, and is planned as a follow up session for people who attended the first, but all are welcome of course.

Some people have indicated they could not make some of these dates. Leigh Blackall has accepted to run similar sessions end January (date tbc), just before University resumes. This may allow those of you who cannot find time in December to come in January, or to come to the 13 December session and the follow up in January (after lots of practice).

If you are still interested, just let me know and I will confirm your registration and sent out venue details,

Thanks,

Joelle Vandermensbrugghe
University of Canberra, Research Education Program

Twitter power user shows how

Some great tips for using Twitter to access rich information

As always, things never go to plan

We had a massively long conversation with Zina and Chris last night. Both are involved in developing a new website for their respective places of work, and both are interested in ideas for incorporating social media and more social practices.

I remember 2 core principles being discussed:

Spread content widely, using tools that aid efficiency, and tiw it all together again on the main central site.

Better to ask individuals in your organisation to blog, vlog, tweet etc about the organisation, then to set up an "organisational" Twitter or Facebook accounst that will only die an organised death through lake of authenticity. Detail of this idea was in the discussion, and Chris mentioned an article with words to this effect on Idealog. Chris, I hope you can find the article for us...

Below is rough notes and links from last nighst rather intense discussion:

Wikis as websites:

Raw wiki - http://wikieducator.org/Otago_Polytechnic

Made pretty - http://www.superuser.com.au/Main_Page

OUSA Youtube needs to be managed better. Needs responses to comments, needs to make favs and playlists. Use the features.

http://www.youtube.com/user/OUSAScarfieTV

Also, once you use the features on Youtube, embed the channel on OUSA website using embed codes provided by Youtube.

Upload videos to multiple services at once (saves time, makes a backup, spreads)

http://tubemogul.com/

Local webdesign businesses

http://demo.loopsolutions.co.nz/

http://www.fireweb.co.nz/blog

Both have their own Content Management Systems

YahooPipes - Once you have spread your data out across the popular Internet, bring it all together on OUSA. You can use Yahoo Pipes http://yahoopipes.com to bring it together, as well as for media monitoring, research etc. This blog is full of crazy ideas for Yahoo Pipes: http://ouseful.wordpress.com/

SCOPE Art Journal uses Wordpress as a CMS

http://thescopes.org

Pull yourself together!

So, if you follow my advice you will have distributed yourself all over the Internet. You'll have not just one blog going, not just one video account, not just one photo and image account, bookmarks, etc.. but, its important that you tie it all together somehow. You can do this 2 ways I reckon:

1. Create a navigation menu on a central website that points to all the places you exist
2. Bring in all those places via their RSS feeds and display them on one central page

Let's look at both ways.

Here's me with a navigation menu (as well as a bit of RSS content being pulled in)
And here's me 100% RSS

See you tonight (Tuesday) at the Otago Polytechnic's Forth St Campus Community Learning Centre, 6 - 8pm.

Tonight will be interesting

We are coming together again after a month apart! And we have a new venue. These things could make or break our little Dunedin group interested in social media.

But tonight I'm expecting 2 new faces and at least 2 old faces. A designer from the university wanting to know how she might incorporate social media into the website she is re-jigging; a usability consultant who is interested in social media generally and who comes to these Tuesday nights; Chris from the university business school interested in similar things as the designer; and myself who wants to share some research I've been doing in Otago Polytechnic's use of social media.

So, see you there I hope. The Otago Polytechnic's Forth St Campus Community Learning Centre, on Union St across from the Bill Robertson Library.

New venue confirmed

Ok, we have a new venue, this time with a projector, good group working space, and quieter (I think we'll have it to ourselves even!). It seems we have some more interest from people at the University too, so they'll enjoy the proximity.

We are now at the Otago Polytechnic's Forth St Community Learning Centre (which is actually on Union St East!) Here's a map:

SEE YOU TUESDAY 1ST SEPTEMBER 6-9PM


View Otago Polytechnic Community Learning Centres in a larger map