Comments on: New Media Knowledge Seminar: Blogging - A Real Conversation

By: Suw

Suw — Sun, 03 Jul 2005 12:42:25 +0000

Johnnie: I actually do agree with your points about the way that traditional conferences can be a big crap, but I think the problem is that many of the people who are doing interesting things are not people who necessarily know how to communicate well. For some lucky people it comes naturally, but the rest of us have to work on it. I would love to eventually become a speaker as good as Danny O’Brien or Cory Doctorow, but I think it’s going to take a lot of practice and maybe some training.

Lloyd: Yes, I agree with you about the reason for the rise of objectivity, and were I to do that talk again I would put that in. I don’t think this is going to be one of those talks I repeat though, and I am still not convinced I said anything that useful.

The mind-map I had only made up the day before, and I wasn’t entirely sure how I would navigate around it on screen without it interrupting my flow. Maybe I just need to experiment a bit more with that sort of thing.

Thanks for the feedback too. I hate standing behind lecterns - I hate feeling that there’s something between me and everyone else - but equally, I suppose I am not quite confident enough as a speaker yet to walk about. I’ll try not to shuffle next time. Don’t want to be mistaken for a zombie.

By: Lloyd Davis

Lloyd Davis — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 10:13:21 +0000

On what you said: I think one important point missed is that objectivity gained its hold for good reasons. The need for objectivity in science was a way of cutting out all of the complexity in order to be sure that what you are doing is understandable and repeatable - if we hadn’t done this we wouldn’t have had the technology that makes life so complex. The need for objectivity in corporations was to separate the endeavour from the individual so that one merchant wouldn’t be wiped out by a single shipwreck. These needs are more or less valid still. Your point, well made, is that the press release variety of objectivity is one whose life is over - it worked for mass industrial production, but it doesn’t work for knowledge production, because we need to do our own simplification and triangulation to make up our minds and we have the tools to do it.

On how you said it: I’ve just listened back to the audio and it comes over well in my view. I think it would have been good to share the mind map in session, but then I’m an evangelist for these sorts of things. You should smile more, you have a nice smile. And you should choose whether to walk about or stand still behind the lectern, I seem to remember you shuffling quite a bit, which is difficult for me when I have no visual aids to distract me.

By: Johnnie Moore

Johnnie Moore — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 19:13:53 +0000

Hi Sue. I can’t remember what I actually said on the day but I certainly don’t want to turn it into an either/or thing (either speech OR conversation). I was having some fun playing with the model though!

And good point about the authority/grace the audience gives the speaker.