Author: Nancy White

Tweetstats, bursts and bubbles

I’ve been helping launch a global online workshop this week, support a massive proposal development and get ready for a F2F conference. (My session on integrating visual practices in whole systems change process has notes here.) Oh, and nurse my husband through knee surgery. So I’ve been silent on the blogging and Twitter front. I had not watched my blog stats much until I installed WordPress and, as is totally obvious, when you don’t blog, your traffic drops like a stone. Makes sense.

Same goes for Twitter. If you don’t tweet, you don’t get tweets back!  Beth Kanter pointed me to TweetStats :: for NancyWhite and help me get a great visual of my Twitter patterns since I first signed up in November, 2006. I don’t tweet when I’m really busy.

Nancy’s Tweet Stats

pickinjavas bookmarks on del.icio.us

Pickinjava’s del.icio.us bookmarks
Late last month I picked up a trackback from a del.icio.us user, pickinjava. Pickinjava is exploring social networks on del.icou.us. This morning I went to find a bookmark and could not resist clicking on the “my network” link. Visiting this page for me is like a time/world travel hole into which I love to slip — and usually lose several hours.

At the top was a bunch of bookmarks about Africa from Pickinjava. I started clicking on links, going back to the list and seeing what tags were there, and who else had bookmarked the link. Now I think I have a tiny taste of why Pickinjava is doing this exploration of bookmarking networks. It is addictive.

It is fascinating is to look at someone’s bookmarks and for a moment, try and imagine what they are looking for, what they are interested in, why the bookmarked any particular link. A novel full of ideas spring to mind. It is like a nano-second of slipping into someone else’s skin. Not long enough to really KNOW anything, but a ghost of a sense.

I can’t explain it, but it is touching me deeply this morning. So Pickinjava, thanks for noticing my tagstream which led me to you.

Haiku as Conference Capture

SXSX Image from Honoria StarbuckBill Anderson adds to the repetoire of conference capture techniques with Haiku Notes from SXSW

PRAXIS101: SXSW 2008 Reflection: Free association as a note-taking practice.

Your social footprint.
Or your ghost on the network.
You have to choose one.

Of course, to complement the text, I’ll grab one of Bill’s colleague’s visual efforts, an image from Honoria Starbuck!

Mike Rohde’s visual conference harvest

Image by Mike Rohde, Creative Commons license
In the continuing visual thinking vein, take a look at Mike Rohde’s SXSW Sketchnotes AND, the gift he offers with his post, Lessons Learned from my SXSW Sketchnotes. Mike’s lessons from doing Moleskin notebook sketches to capture conference sessions and experiences, then sharing them freely on flickr… pulling out a few key quotes. Go read the whole article.

A Fast Spreading Meme
I’m fascinated at how quickly the sketchnotes spread across the net. On the Tweet scan and RSS searches for my name, “SXSW Sketchnotes” were popping up all over and being re-tweeted like crazy. [Nancy’s comments – we hunger for the visual]

Readers Like Personal Accounts
…Sharing a unique, personal perspective is a powerful way to communicate. Sketchnotes are one way that attendees to the panels can re-live an experience…
[Nancy’s comments – we hunger for the personal]

The Human Touch Attracts Readers
…They’re a little imperfect, yet very readable and understandable…
[Nancy’s comments – we hunger for something we can relate to – with comfort]

Sketchnotes Awaken Memories
…Notes and sketches of my activities help me recall clear memories — even years after the trip…
[Nancy’s comments – well, as I age, I appreciate this even MORE]

New Opportunities
I’ve been approached several times this week about doing “sketchnote” style illustrations for a couple of projects. ..
[Nancy’s comments – being open and generous pays off]

Creative Commons Frees Up Images
All of the sketchnote scans and photos have been uploaded to Flickr with a Creative Commons non-commercial, attribution license, which frees people to place my images on their sites with attribution, and no need to ask permission. I love this!
[Nancy’s comments – so do I. THANKS!]

Image by Mike Rohde

Lead with what you want, not what you have

coffee is fuel
I am intrigued by this bit of advice from Michael Idinopulos writing about Creating a Participatory Knowledgebase: 3 Best Practices

Lead with what you want, not what you have. Many groups, especially research groups, tend to use the wiki as a dumping ground for research they’ve already done. This research typically takes the form of reports which were written for a specific audience to answer a specific question at a specific moment in time. So the value of the reports themselves isn’t so great. What is valuable, however, is the insights embedded in those reports. That’s what contributors should be encouraged to post to the wiki. Put differently, a page called “Trends in Retail Channel Marketing” is a better wiki page than “2006 Analysis of our Company’s Channel Marketing Spend”. (Of course, the report might be useful as backup–so include it as a link from the main page on trends).

Since I’ve recently been up to my eyeballs with a wiki on knowledge sharing, this caught my eye. How do we use language to engage others? What makes something “yet another info dump” and another thing an attractor towards ongoing knowledge sharing?

The KS wiki is mostly about sharing information about knowledge sharing tools and methods. This information is available all over the web, but scattered. What it also lacks is insights of what to use when and a place for stories of use. Right now, we are really working hard to try and find ways to express the invitation for sharing use stories, but I had totally forgotten about ways to ask for what you want? Now I’m thinking maybe a page that is a springboard to expressing need.

Creative Commons License photo credit: NataPics
What do you think? How would you phrase the invitation? How would you make any of the existing pages on the wiki more of an invitation to what we want, vs. what we have?