Monday, August 21, 2006
Vancouver Meeting
This past Thursday and Friday, I have been in Vancouver with WESTAF folks and a group of smart techies/arts people from Canada. The WESTAF congingent included Len Edgerly,--our Chair and soon board member of NEFA (another regional arts organization)—Anthony Radich ED of WESTAF, Shannon Daut Sr Director of Programs of WESTAF, Alex Ooms a WESTAF advisor. The group from Vancouver included Darren Barefoot from Capulet, Kris Krug Technologist and Photographer, Gillan Rowe the Associate Manager of Pacific Theatre, James Sheret a Web Developer and Novelist, Roland Tanglao a Technologist, and Monique Trottier the Web Marketing Manager for Raincoast Books.
Len and Anthony asked Darren to bring this group of people together to discuss strategies to help move WESTAF’s technology programs to the next level. The meeting was in the format of an informal brainstorming session, with the first evening being an overview of WESTAF activities and capacities.
Currently WESTAF has five main technology programs.
ArtJob Online – A service that provides a place to post and search for jobs in the arts—mostly in the US.
ArtistsRegister—A service for artists to market work.
ZAPPlication org—A service for indoor and outdoor festivals to solicit applicantions from artists.
CaFE (CallforEntry.org—A service for public art programs, galleries, museums, fellowship programs to solicit applications from artists.
CultureGrants Online—a service for granting agencies to accept and manage the grant application process.
A good chunk of what we discussed revolved around social networking systems like DIGG, Technocrati, de.li.cious, LinkedIN, and Flikr. Some of these tools I’ve been using for some time in my personal life but in the discussion aspects of linking and sharing data (whether it is text, images, or video) through tagging and grouping with like individuals (and groups) has some interesting possibilities.
Personally, I will be starting to load some of my enormous library of photographs to Flikr and link them back to my blog. I use Technocrati and LinkedIN, but I’m fairly sure I can make better use of these tools after this conversation.
Some fascinating insights came from this conversation—first off, the Web used to behave like wave form patterns. You would create content and the causal affect of this would be like a wave moving from your Web content. Increasingly, organizations and individuals have more than one presence on the Web and these presences may not have any direct connection with other presences. For example, I have my own—sadly un-updated—Web site, I have this blog, I can be found on LinkedIN, Technocrati, on ArtistsRegister, and on a myriad of other hosted systems. These are all like particles in the Web. So using aggregating tools, I should be able to create a cluster of content that can be accessed by others using RSS feeds (for example). Using contextual tagging, this content can also be clustered with other user’s information even for temporary disposable purposes like a single cultural event.
Social conferencing and contextual tagging increase the possibility of my being found in an ever expanding Internet.
Wikis also represent an engine for collaboration that we might be able to make use of. For example, turning one of our site’s FAQ’s into a Wiki affords us the opportunitiy to make use of other user’s knowledge base outside of the immediate WESTAF team. Currently we use forums in this fashion, the posts tend to be simple question answer relationships.
Web 2.0 is propelling us into a Hyper Social world. In which PARTICIPATION is key to success.
I was entirely engaged over this day or so of conversation. It was one of the best conversations regarding Web tools than I’ve had in very long time. I hope it continues.
Thanks to Darren and Len for setting this up.
Len and Anthony asked Darren to bring this group of people together to discuss strategies to help move WESTAF’s technology programs to the next level. The meeting was in the format of an informal brainstorming session, with the first evening being an overview of WESTAF activities and capacities.
Currently WESTAF has five main technology programs.
ArtJob Online – A service that provides a place to post and search for jobs in the arts—mostly in the US.
ArtistsRegister—A service for artists to market work.
ZAPPlication org—A service for indoor and outdoor festivals to solicit applicantions from artists.
CaFE (CallforEntry.org—A service for public art programs, galleries, museums, fellowship programs to solicit applications from artists.
CultureGrants Online—a service for granting agencies to accept and manage the grant application process.
A good chunk of what we discussed revolved around social networking systems like DIGG, Technocrati, de.li.cious, LinkedIN, and Flikr. Some of these tools I’ve been using for some time in my personal life but in the discussion aspects of linking and sharing data (whether it is text, images, or video) through tagging and grouping with like individuals (and groups) has some interesting possibilities.
Personally, I will be starting to load some of my enormous library of photographs to Flikr and link them back to my blog. I use Technocrati and LinkedIN, but I’m fairly sure I can make better use of these tools after this conversation.
Some fascinating insights came from this conversation—first off, the Web used to behave like wave form patterns. You would create content and the causal affect of this would be like a wave moving from your Web content. Increasingly, organizations and individuals have more than one presence on the Web and these presences may not have any direct connection with other presences. For example, I have my own—sadly un-updated—Web site, I have this blog, I can be found on LinkedIN, Technocrati, on ArtistsRegister, and on a myriad of other hosted systems. These are all like particles in the Web. So using aggregating tools, I should be able to create a cluster of content that can be accessed by others using RSS feeds (for example). Using contextual tagging, this content can also be clustered with other user’s information even for temporary disposable purposes like a single cultural event.
Social conferencing and contextual tagging increase the possibility of my being found in an ever expanding Internet.
Wikis also represent an engine for collaboration that we might be able to make use of. For example, turning one of our site’s FAQ’s into a Wiki affords us the opportunitiy to make use of other user’s knowledge base outside of the immediate WESTAF team. Currently we use forums in this fashion, the posts tend to be simple question answer relationships.
Web 2.0 is propelling us into a Hyper Social world. In which PARTICIPATION is key to success.
I was entirely engaged over this day or so of conversation. It was one of the best conversations regarding Web tools than I’ve had in very long time. I hope it continues.
Thanks to Darren and Len for setting this up.
Comments:
<< Home
My head's still on fire with all that we learned in Vancouver. What a terrific group, and thanks, Matthew, for putting up this thoughtful summary of the proceedings.
Post a Comment
<< Home
