How new web technologies will change your business

I am just about to leave for the Les Blogs 2.0 conference which will be taking place on december 5 and 6 in Paris and i thought it would be interesting to list here the main points about why todays conferences are different from the ones you might know.

New web technologies are changing the usual conference mostly because people can communicate between each other before, during and after the conference:

Before: Who’s who
Once the conference has been announced, each people subscribing to the event are listed on the participant page, thus letting everyone know who’s gonna be there. Subscriber mostly use their blog address so its fairly easy to get to know what each participant is about. Really interesting point here is to see the country where are participant from: France, USA, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Netherland, England, Spain, Canada (!), Denmark and so on.

Same goes with the speakers list growing every week, aside from the conference schedule.

So basically, anyone interested in the conference can see the organisation and the schedule around the event growing every week. I am watching whats happening around Les Blogs 2.0 conference since it was first announced in august.

During the conference: Bloggers attack
This is a conference about blogs, so guess what, loads of people in there will be blogging the event live (i will) and list on their blogs info that they want to keep as an archive or stuff they want to share with their readers.

In this case, soon before the conference someone created a list of all participant and speakers RSS feeds (RSS feed are a way to subscribe to blogs so you can keep up with the blogs you are interested into. Read more about RSS feed here). This list will be used mostly by people who can’t attend the conference but want to be kept in the loop of what’s happening over the conference.

The conference in text, pictures, audio and video
Participants will blog text, pictures, audio (podcast) and video (vlog) from the conference and what’s happening around, so you’ll basically feel like if you were there.

Pictures of the conference will all be tagged under a definite code, which in this case could be ‘lesblogs2′ – so by visiting the flickr page associated with the tag ‘lesblogs2‘ you’ll be able to see all pictures posted.

Here are all pictures tagged with ‘lesblogs’ from the previous conference: lesblogs on flickr;

here are all blog post tagged with ‘lesblogs’: lesblogs on technorati;

here is a page listing all participant posts now and during the conference;

here is a Linkedin group that was created for all participants to network before and after the conference.

That’s about it for a round up, i’m sure i am missing some things but i think you’ll get the idea. My point here was to show how new web technologies changed many things, one being the way communities are created and are growing, how the information is now spread all over and not kept into walls anymore. Our planet is getting smaller every day, we’re now all neighbors.

I’ll be off to Paris soon, and will be blogging here, posting pictures on my flickr account, and what else, take some time off!

Le Web 2.0, le Web Nouveau

Tout le monde, enfin tout les gens qui sont près du web en parlent depuis quelque mois. Le Web 2.0 est à la mode, au goût du jour, mais qu’est-ce que c’est au juste, et en quoi ca vous affectera?

On m’a dernièrement questionné sur le Web 2.0, sa définition et mes idées et opinions face au phénomène. J’ai cru bon partager mes réponses dans le but de faire circuler mes idées, faire connaître le phénomène aux usager qui vivent de plus en plus dans ce dit Web 2.0 et qui le créent chaque jours sans le savoir.

Lire Le Web 2.0, le Web Nouveau sur meïdia.

Patrick fait un bon résumé de ce qui c’est dit sur le Web 2.0 dans les dernières semaines ici.

Myspace = MTV of the Net Generation

Wired article ‘The hit factory’ summarize pretty well why Myspace has it all:

What they have is MySpace, a community Web site that converts electronic word of mouth into the hottest marketing strategy since the advent of MTV. (…) “This generation is growing up without having ever watched programmed media,” says Courtney Holt, head of new media and strategic marketing at Interscope, one of the first labels to embrace MySpace. “They don’t think in terms of the album, and they don’t think in terms of a TV schedule. They think in terms of TiVo, P2P, AOL, and of course MySpace. We’re just going to have to adapt.”

In the November issue of Wired Mag, read the online version here.

Les réseaux sociaux sur Internet

La chronique Décryptage de tendances de Nicolas Langelier à Indicatif Présent traite cette semaine des réseaux sociaux sur internet. En 11 minutes il réussit à bien faire passer beaucoup d’information qui serait normalement très abstraite pour le commun des mortels. J’ai eu le plaisir de contribuer à cette chronique en échangeant idées et infos sur le web 2.0 avec Nicolas – à écouter ici.

Le siècle des amateurs

Article fort intéressant de Michel publié dans Le Devoir du 14 mars portant sur l’impact de la culture de réseau grâce à laquelle il est maintenant rendu possible pour des ‘amateurs’ de participer plus activement que jamais à l’avancement technologique :

‘Ce qui est fascinant avec les nouveaux outils et l’arrivée d’Internet, c’est de constater que, soudainement, en regroupant leurs forces, et en partageant leurs idées et leurs réflexions, des amateurs parviennent à remuer des industries au point que ses professionnels doivent composer avec les travaux des amateurs
(…)
Or, avec les nouveaux outils technologiques plus puissants et simples d’utilisation, il est permis à n’importe quelle personne qui parvient à les apprivoiser de créer. Certains préféreront mettre leurs forces en commun afin d’améliorer les outils disponibles, comprenez en cela le logiciel libre, tandis que d’autres se distingueront en utilisant le plein potentiel de ces outils afin de créer des “oeuvres” qui auparavant, auraient été impossibles à produire.’

Captivant -
En lire plus : Technologie: Des outils pour que l’amateur crée

Everything’s interrelated, interconnected

Everything’s interrelated,
interconnected (1010101010101010101)

I can post from mostly anywhere / anytime, – my home, coffees i like, workplace, the street -
I can send pictures from mostly anywhere / anytime, – as long as my cellphone signal is on –
and have them seen from mostly anyone at anytime.

I am anywhere and everywhere – can’t you see it -
geography has disappeared in an immense web of sharing – how w-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-de.

electronic devices has made sharing thoughts with the rest of the world easier than ever –
let’s see how is it gonna be like in years from now.

so many people have i actually shared with –
these same i wouldn’t probably have met if it wouldn’t have been of my presence in this endless web,
people who have known me as a virtual entity at first,
there are probably hundreds of them now,
maybe more (384922652637484626250736363)

numerous conversations wouldn’t have took place without IM and emails sharing –
many party missed, wouldn’t it have been of people SMSing me.

— how much of my life got influenced and shaped by meeting these people —

how many ideas exchanged, that have evolved in each and everyone’s head -
spreading,
expanding,
e v o l v i n g ,
changing our lifes -

-i–i–i–i- -i- -i- -i- -i- -i- -i- -i- -i–i–i–i- -i- -i–i- -i- -i- -i- -i- -i-

I just can’t guess it -
the amount of knowledge that got shared,
ideas that were created,
how many lifes influenced by virtually interacting with each other.

in some time from now blogs won’t be blogs anymore,
they’re gonna be virtual id’s – our thoughts-ideas-tastes-
virtual memoir of our lifes,
archived as a straight html files –
intellectual souls, classified by day/week/month/year/decades -
family trees,
fully linked network of all our related friends, family, interest and hobbys.

You’ll be able to get into people’s webspaces,
and make the move (or not) that could bring you to interact with them -
Then, zillions of things could happen —
or none (0).

We won’t be strangers anymore,
we’ll all be invisibly connected together (ok, we already are)
far away so close,
growing / sharing with each other.

the more of yourself you’re gonna put in,
the more will be given to the community –
this entity,
ecosystem,
it’s gonna grow -
we’ll venture in new technologies (!)
* * * with more weblogs then stars in the sky * *

millions of blogs, (right now about 5,070,054)
each of them being different from each other -
there wont be any limit,
everyone’s invited ‘caus there is plenty of gigabytes waiting to be filled -
thousands of people waiting to be heard.
bring your on music-pictures-videos, we shall all listen.

we’ll all be loosely joined, our lifes being all interrelated, interconnected,
- want it or not.

©2004, m-c turgeon Рwww.mcturgeon.com

Online Social Networks – knowledge community

A must read:

“Online social networks are webs of relationships that grow from computer-mediated discussions. The webs grow from conversations among people who share a common affinity (e.g., they work for the same company, department, or in the same discipline) and who differ in other ways (e.g., they are in different locations, keep different hours, specialize in different disciplines, work for different companies).
(…)
Search engines find facts. People provide solutions to problems. Networks of people can solve problems for each other. Online networks accelerate and globalize the process. Each person in a network knows more than anybody else in the network about at least one special interest and can provide useful knowledge when questions arise concerning their area of expertise. No person is an expert on everything, so we must rely on the expertise of others.”

* How Online Social Networks Benefit Organizations

Social Softwares – for the joy of building things with other people

Whew.. really interesting article here about Social Softwares or how the heck you wanna name it.

Read the rest of this entry »

10 reasons why blogging is good for you

I started this list a while ago, not really to explain to others why i was blogging, but more for myself to understand, why the hell i was blogging. What does it had to do in my life, why it caught my attention and why it quickly became an habit – even skipping a day or two could make me feel that something was missing. 

So here it is. A short list of the reasons why i think blogging is good and why i think everyone should get to press the publish button. Feel free to add your ideas to it. This might just be the start.

Blogging is a form of expression, as any other art. I think Martha Graham’s quote is describing pretty well what i think blogging is about:

“..There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to deternine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions…”

* * *

1- Letting the world know about you
Imagine each and every folks in urban centers manifesting themselves by saying out loud: “I am here! This is me, what i think-feel-ate today-did-saw-thought”. This is somehow similar to what blogging is – it allows us to manifest ourself and take a place in the (virtual) world, bringing us a little step away from being perfect strangers to one another.

Some might see blogs as a result of mild exhibitionism, or even, being only written by ego-centered people. I say, blogging is a good way to forge a voice of your own and let the collective knowledge travel around the web, with some of your ideas and personality added to it.

2- Feeling heard (and sometimes understood)
Having people visiting and commenting my blog in an intelligent manner is one of the greatest reward for me, the author and human bean behind this blog. I feel heard and understood by many folks out there. Many people are writing me to express how they do appreciate my sharing about life and how it help them figure out their own way. You guys rock. Maintaining a blog with no one visiting or commenting would be sad as a clown doing a show with no one watching. Virtual interactions and site stats is mostly what keep bloggers alive and kicking.

3- What you think is what you get
Sharing your true self (well, who you really are) with the virtual community is fundamental about blogging. Like in a relationship, the more of yourself you invest in your blog, the better it will get.Who you are, what you think, like, dislike, listen to, read, places and websites you like – all this tell us a bit more about you each day. Bloggers are curious people, in case you didn’t already figured out. For me blogging was a new way to express myself, communicate and share ideas. It somehow helps keep my sanity, as strange as this might sound. Maybe it’s all about categorizing thoughts and getting things clearly written down that makes me feel that way.

4- Meeting people isn’t so easy
As much as i do like Radiohead, i do have to disagree with their saying Meeting people is easy. Meeting people is everything but not easy these days, as we may all suffer from isolation at one time or another. Having a blog might help to find people who have similar interest as you – this means to create something we used to call “community”- folks connected one to another by similar interest. Blogging is an essential tool to build virtual communities which often end up in get together like events where people meet face2face. Beside that, blogging help you keep in touch with family and friends who can check out what you are up to these days. Wouldn’t you like your mom to call and ask about this new guy/girl you are dating?

‘With the raw materials in my blog, my mom could actually construct an accurate picture of who I am. This is fucking serious.’
- The Onion

5- Getting to know yourself (and see your own life with a different perspective)
The outside world doesn’t hold the answer about who you actually are. It is through reaction to events and what surrounds you that you get to know yourself – who you truly are. While reading about other people’s lifes, on superficial or deeper levels, you can catch a glimpse of how is life for them, and then see your own life with a different perspective. This said, blogging is also about getting to discover yourself while discovering about other people’s life.

6- Deepening our understanding of human nature (oh yeah, don’t we need that?)
Does this really need to be explained here? Like people watching, reading blogs give you a good overview of how it is to be a human these days and how all our lifes are deeply connected and similar. (Caution here: people lightly unfulfilled by their day job might end up caught into obsessive blog reading on job time. At the moment i am writing these lines there aren’t still any known therapy for this addiction).

7- If only you knew what you might find
Reading about other people’s lifes and interest got me to expand my horizons and discover new things.This said, in the last months, i have read about kniting, book binding, new music bands. I have discovered new authors, artists, places to visit, how it is to live in montreal from an expat point of view, and have seen wonderful places via photoblogs. All this via my favortie blog reading list.

8- Access to not filtered sources of information
Reading different blogs, i can get access to information which wouldn’t be accessible via the average media sources. This is a topic in itself, but you are the only judge about what’s good information on the net and what’s not.

9- Sharing and collecting information
Through blogging, you can share a lot of information about your passions. Your favorite bands, movies, authors, or business related information. I do keep listed my fav bands and related links. Same goes for artist, designers and authors i like.Keeping all my blog archives, i can think of the day where next generations could be able to read my blog as a memoire… if i do archive everything properly of course… lazy me.

10- A hope for blogging to make us better people
Blogging is about sharing thoughts and ideas by writing daily/weekly or monthly on a webspace accessible online. Writing about things that matters to you will likely force you to question yourself and express feelings and thoughts as clearly as possible to the outside world. Thus, this can just result as you, being a better communicator -and hopefully- blogging will make us better people.

Be wild, be open minded, but before all, just be who you are.

2004 , M-C Turgeon.

* * *

Suggested readings:
* Small pieces loosely joined, a unified theory of the web
* Biz Stone: Who let the blogs out
* Never Threaten to Eat Your Co-Workers: Best of Blogs
* Writing down the bones

* * *

Version française ici.

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With podcasting being more accessible, i think its a good thing to have this article as an audio file.The audio version last for about 10 minutes, and i had much fun doing it… i made an mp3 out of the bloopers, which you can find here. Enjoy

- 10 reasons why blogging is good for you, 11 minutes audio file;
- Bloopers, about 1.30 minutes.