Open Gmail
You know. I don’t say too much in e-mail that I wouldn’t say in person. In fact once I get going I’m much more likely to say something in person that I would regret than I am in e-mail.
I have a couple people I like to e-mail often, and sometimes we get into some nice discussions. Sometimes not. But I am curious enough not to care. I enjoy reading blog entries about how bad a person’s day was. It makes me feel human in a way that casual and intimate content doesn’t. Don’t know why.
So if I’m okay with being open and knowing what I write is suitable for a worldwide audience why not put it all out there?
I want to open my gmail account to the public. Many of us should do that. Get these “offline” discussions out in the open. Let it allllll hang out. And see what comes of it.
Google? Let me “tag” a discussion or e-mail as ‘openDiscussion’ then you can automatically make it available on my Google page.
Do that for me, will ya?
An Antonym Engine (or anti-social networks)
We select our social groups based on how well we fit in. Or don’t. As our opinions or influences change, our social groups might change to match our new mindset or world view.
We are continually preaching to the choir to some extent. Our exposure to new ideas is limited by our own actions, intentional or not. We don’t seek experiences, people or situations that challenge our beliefs because this makes us uncomfortable.
People fear that the effect of this self selection may be magnified within social communities. They might be right.
I read recently that del.icio.us is endanger of tag intersection paralysis. That says to me that so many people are saying things that are so similar about the same things that it is becoming more difficult to discern any mean.
I’ve been reading about the problems of open taxonomies since I first encountered the word. (Probably from Christina Wodtke before boxes and arrows.) I’ve experienced some of the problems folksonomies pose, and I’ve felt the positive and negative effect of being in the choir.
Anyone reading this (a blog about something as sexy as context and content) is probably already in my choir. So why don’t some of you software gurus reverse engineer this folksonomy problem by hooking up a thesaurus or two and creating an antonym engine.
Then I can create a nice puffy, white tag cloud and the antonym engine will generate a dark foreboding tag cloud derived from antonyms of my own tags.
I read (and reread) a lot of stuff from differing points of view which reminds me of another phrase: “Know your enemy.”
Help me link to the stuff my enemy is reading!! If we all start reading what our enemies are reading, then we’ll all be reading from the same page. Isn’t that nice thought?
Give me an antonym engine, and I’ll give you vigorous public discourse. (I might need a better spam filter first.)
Photography as Content
- Identify your photo geniuses. Across the institution, ask yourself who has the “eye” for photography and who understands Web optimization. Unlike distributed authoring, keep your number of photo experts between one and five.
- Organize and centralize. It is tempting for individual departments to keep the photos that are specific to themselves. But to get the most out of your photo inventory, allow for all photos to be centrally managed. Start with stockpiling every shot over the past couple years. Develop categories (admission, alumni, buildings, etc.) and place each photo into those categories. Put all optimized images in one location for all content authors, as a Web gallery, if possible.
- Develop optimization standards. When making a photo web-ready, select your jpeg quality level, cropping techniques, and photographic styles. These styles could be journalistic, blurred, action, etc. If there are any filters that need to be applied, your “photo geniuses” should have everything they need to ensure consistency.
- Keep it simple. Even though some images require it, keep cropping to a minimum. To avoid bottlenecks, the less your photo experts need to do to each image, the more fluid the process and less cause for errors.
- Restock the shelves. Because of hairstyles, clothing, and changes to campus, photography typically has a two-year lifecycle. Develop a plan for professional photography as well as continually adding event photography. Archive the old images (you never know). And finally, with all your images centralized, it is very easy to identify needed shots once or twice a year.
With these tips, you will see a significant improvement in your image library and avoid always hunting for the right image. Remember to always keep images relevant to page content.
Good luck.
Face-ing Context
Tara Hunt wrote a couple days ago that:
Until we can teach computers context (think about it, that’s the barrier to some real Artificial Intelligence, folks), achieving really fantastic recognition is nearly impossible. Comparing pixels doesn’t even come close to examining context - and I believe that photos are about 40% pixels and 60% context.
Context really is everything. We can’t fully understand something until its context is known. A face, a person, an article, a Web site, a navigation system, the door on a building.
All of these how’s and why’s help us use things more effectively.
Reminds me of this month’s Wired article, “Say Hello to Stanley” where first-gen robot vehicles were afraid of their shadow.
Context.
CMS Shme-em-ess
Content management isn’t the sexiest industry. But it is going to get even less so. Dimitri started me thinking on this.
Content management tools or systems will continue to improve, and companies will still buy them; but their importance to the world outside of the walls of IT will decrease. Eventually content professionals will choose management/distribution tools much the same way that print professionals choose four color presses over Xerox jobs.
A CMS is irrelevant to the consumer reader. And to the author these tools are a distraction and a nuisance. The tool usually gets in the way of the content.
I’m not interested in finding new ways of delivering content. I get excited when we think about ways to improve audience share, attention and comprehension.
So this week’s article from Gerry McGovern really hits home with me. Gerry wrote:
The Web is the greatest laboratory that content could ever hope for.
If you are a content professional, you should embrace this laboratory with enthusiasm.
He goes on to say:
Scientific Content Management is not about coming up with a rigid set of rules that must always be obeyed. It is about a relentless focus on the reader, and understanding their behavior better than they understand themselves.
I love that.
How can content professionals, know our readers better than they know themselves?
- Talk to them.
- Ask them questions.
- Give one paragraph of text to the first six readers and another paragraph to the next six readers.
- Put out a call to action and measure the clicks.
I can’t wait to get my own content lab up and running!
MySpace Band vs. MTV Band
From Pandora to iTunes social networking is influencing music. A quick glance at Google to view the latest hits on “MySpace bands” indicates that society, such that it is on myspace.com, could make or break a band rather than relying on the industries movers and shakers. That’s all been said before. Nothing new.
But something to watch in the next year or two is how we will view these MySpace bands. Will some cliques deride them as my friends did Duran Duran in 1983? Will we see the 2007 equivalent to a-ha emerge from MySpace?
What is Fuzzy?
What is Fuzzy Content?
Fuzzy math and fuzzy logic both refer to something that is based somewhat on perception or context. “Fuzzy” refers to something that isn’t quite obvious or apparent.
Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about “fuzzy logic.” And look at what Answers.com says about “fuzzy” in general.
We like “indefinite” and “cloudy.” Though we have to admit the “confused and not coherent; not clearly thought out” part seems relevant in our darker moments.
In short, fuzzy content relates to social content management because a truly *social* content management system (CMS) would result in indefinite context for each reader because the content of a particular Web page would be based on the individual reader’s unique path to the current page and how all other readers have interacted with that page before the current visit.
So that’s fuzzy content.
Why Are We Doing This?
We’re interested in exploring ideas related to what we’re calling social content management.
“We” are Dimitri Glazkov and Bob Robertson-Boyd. We want to share and solicit ideas to help everyone flesh out how social networking Web sites can influence or perhaps supersede content management systems in the future.
In October 2005 at a conference in San Francisco, we presented some examples of how a Web site could be influenced and improved by intertwingling content with readers to provide more context for other readers. The wiki we used is still “out there.”
Context is everything.
