Giving a workshop on social software

This is to demonstrate trackback in action. Trackbacking Elmine

BlogWalk Mechelen: the post-its

I have transcribed all the post-its we created during the BlogWalk session in Mechelen. They are posted in the wiki (including the original pictures)

Elmine Wijnia and Jeroen Steeman check out the first wave of post-its

(tag: BlogWalk)

BlogWalk 7 Mechelen

Yesterday saw the 7th edition of BlogWalk in Mechelen, Belgium. It was a pleasant gathering, although in my opinion it lacked some focus on the theme we set: civic journalism. The conversations were broad and wide, and some very basic questions that in my mind were already dealt with surfaced.

First round of conversations, on the wall the post-it 'wiki' grows.

Not surprising, given the fact that this group was largely new to BlogWalk, and largely also to eachother. This certain lack of shared context should have been countered more by me through adding a bit more structure. The group discussion we did in the second part of the afternoon was valuable to bring earlier conversations together though, and served us well as it did in Nuremberg last year. In that sense it was a pity that several people had to leave early (as it was a pity that some people were delayed on arrival, missing the general introduction), as that would probably have helped them in getting a more complete picture of the event.

Lunch in the Hogeschool Mechelen, continuing our exchanges

As BlogWalk grows as a series, we will have to rethink our organisational template a bit, in terms of preparation and introducing the participants to the event and eachother. I did use the introduction to explain Open Space, and let people introduce themselves. But I could have taken more time to set the stage for the theme civic journalism. The latter however would have been a totally new component, as usually we never spend time on the theme before opening up the conversations. Time for a discussion with Lilia Efimova and Sebastian Fiedler, my co-initiators of BlogWalk.

Afterwards Elmine and I had an early dinner with Maarten Schenk, Dorien Aerts and Niels Hendriks. Niels had valuable contributions in giving the group discussion momentum, and also agreed with me on the lack of focus.

As usual the pictures and transcription of the post-its will be available in the Blogwalk Wiki

Thanks to Tom de Bruijne, Clo Willaerts and Maarten Schenk for helping with the local organisation!

This is the list of the 19 participants:

Clo Willaerts (http://babynox.blogspot.com)
Maarten Schenk ( http://maarten.typepad.com/ )
Tom de Bruyne ( http://www.memori.be/WEBLOG/ )
Jelle Van den Bergh ( http://www.memori.be/WEBLOG/, http://www.jel.be)
Elmine Wijnia (http://elmine.wijnia.com/)
Ton Zijlstra (http://blog.zylstra.org)
Paul Kersmaekers (http://www.polskaya.be)
Jeroen Steeman (http://www.minitrue.nl)
Hans Mestrum (http://hmestrum.blogs.com/ )
Bram Souffreau (http://www.kapingamarangi.be)
Niels Hendriks
Bartel Volckaert (http://www.journalinks.be)
Francisco Van Jole (http://www.2525.com)
Dorien Aerts (http://theonehitwonder.blogspot.com)
Sven De Haeck (http://www.internetjournalistiek.be)
Brice Le Blevennec (http://www.brice.org)
Manja Dorlandt
Henk Van Ess (http://www.voelspriet.nl/wie.htm)

(tag: BlogWalk)

In Mechelen for BlogWalk

Yesterday evening Elmine and I arrived in Mechelen for the 7th BlogWalk. We had a pleasant stroll around the old city centre, and a great dinner at Toko Karachillio. Our hotel Carolus has a wifi network, even though it's part of an ancient brewery (first mentioned in the 14th century). After asking the reception for the hexadecimal code, access was ok. We ended the evening with a few beers from the Brewery we are staying at of course!

Now preparing for the session today. A lot of new faces for me, and a theme (civic journalism) that can make for heated discussions. Looking forward to it.

This Week's Blogwalks: Belgium and Australia

Two Blogwalks will take place almost in parallel later this week:

Coming Friday, BlogWalk 7 will be held in Mechelen (Belgium), focussing on civic journalism (and connections to smart mobs)
Coming Sunday, BlogWalk 8 will be held in Sydney (Australia), focussing on the impact of blogs and RSS on our routines and what we do.

The Sydney blogwalk will be organized in collaboration with Anne Bartlett-Brag, James Farmer and Adrian Miles and takes place in conjunction with BlogTalk Downunder, the conference Anne, James and Adrian are putting together. The location will be the Yacht Club right in Sydney Harbour. Have a look at the submitted papers.

That BlogWalk 8 is now going to be in Sydney, does not mean that Inssbruck is of the agenda. It will simply be BlogWalk number 9!

(tag: BlogWalk)

Server Slow

To those of you who experienced extreme slowness of my server or even unavailability, my apologies.
Today a prolonged spam attack originating from China overloaded my system with massive numbers of trackback pings.
I have now cleaned hundreds and hundreds of trackback spam and business has returned to normal it seems after updating my blacklist.

Freedom

Exactly sixty years ago World War II ended for the Netherlands. Probably for the last time some two thousand primarily Canadian veterans are revisiting the villages and towns they helped liberate in our region. It must be strange and overwhelming for them. From the train I regularly ride to the Hague, I saw several villages where all houses were flying a Dutch and Canadian flag in their front yards.

Tonight we honor all those who died for freedom in World War II and all those who died in armed conflict since then with two minutes of silence at 8 pm.

Tomorrow we celebrate our freedom, with music festivals and other festivities all over the country.

(also see this entry in my photoblog)