Weblogs@UBC

Weblogs@UBC is an e-learning initiative being spearheaded by the Office of Learning Technology. Bloggers are using powerful, flexible, and immensely popular personal publishing tools to support UBC’s teaching and learning community.

All students, faculty, and staff are invited to participate. If you would like a blog, simply click here to start now.

Webloggers Salon @ UBC, February 15

This Thursday, February 15 at 1:30 UBC is hosting our latest webloggers salon at Telestudios, and I think it's going to be a humdinger (whatever a humdinger is, I hope it's a good thing). As with previous salons, I envision something between a formal panel and a total free-for-all, and hopefully we'll attract a sizable contingent of UBC's blogging community, as well as anyone else in the area who is interested.

We have three featured participants that represent a vast wealth of diverse experiences and expertise:

Eugene Barsky is the driving force behind the UBC Physio Info-blog, a site designed to inform and connect British Columbia's physiotherapists. With an intended audience of 1,700 practitioners, the site has had 17,000 visits over the past nine months. Among other things, I hope to get Eugene talking about the many nifty goodies he's added to enhance the site, such as the Google custom search.

Jon Beasley-Murray has been blogging at Posthegemony and Latin America on Screen (and elsewhere) for nearly two years. I've always enjoyed our collaborations, as he is a consistent advocate of a distributed and hands-off approach to course blogging that promotes student autonomy over their own spaces. An example of a simple course aggregation over multiple platforms can be seen at this page ... and a similar approach was used for a distributed symposium on Gayatri Spivak. One reason I'm glad he's taking part is that he doesn't withhold his fearsome critical skills when it comes to blogging -- see this rip for a sample. Jon will also be part of the education session at Northern Voice.

E. Wayne Ross maintains at least three blogs. A course blog (e learning with e wayne), a complementary blog to the Workplace journal, and his freewheeling professional/personal Where the Blog has No Name. Wayne is always provocative in all these spaces, regularly turning me on to professional developments ranging from the shocking to the appalling. And shallow fellow that I am, I especially enjoy his music blogging -- his tastes are diverse and most groovy, and he's the only person I know who might dig Robert Pollard more than I do.

In addition, we have a few special blogger guests who we will be weaving into the discussion. If you are attending and have thoughts you would like to see represented on the agenda, do let me know.

For those who want to stick around after the discussion wraps around 3:00, I will follow with a series of short demos of useful tools and tricks that offer some pretty slick benefits for bloggers, particularly educational ones.

It promises to be a lively discussion. If you can attend please do register so we can plan for appropriate numbers.

Blurb below:

----

Weblogger's Salon - UBC's Bloggers Sound Off

Date: February 15, 2007
Time: 1:30 - 3:00 pm - followed by lightning tool demos from 3:00 -3:30 pm
Location: ITServices Telestudio, Lower Level, Rm, #0110 - 2329 West Mall

The simplicity and flexibility of weblog systems has led to an explosion of popularity in all domains, including education. The dramatic growth in the ranks of UBC bloggers across the university is undeniable. But have the shiny tools fundamentally changed educational practice? Do weblogs and other social software tools truly provide a superior means of publishing information and communicating with a community? What happens when student are given meaningful control over their online environments? What are the drawbacks or dangers of this approach? What can technology units do to provide the support that bloggers really need

As a special event leading up to the Northern Voice weblog conference, some of UBC's most innovative and accomplished webloggers will lead a discussion of these and other critical issues. For those who can stay after the discussion, convenor Brian Lamb will run through a series of lightning demos of tools and tricks that are indispensable for the educational blogger.

Live @ UBC -- Sound Strategies for Podcasting

If you will be in Vancouver next Tuesday I invite you to come to what promises to be an outstanding session on podcasting from three of UBC’s most accomplished and thoughtful practitioners. It’s presented in conjunction with TAG as part of the Teaching and Learning with Technology series.

• Cyprien Lomas is the Director of The Learning Centre with UBC’s Faculty of Land and Food Systems, in addition to his genuinely world-class efforts as Scholar in Residence with the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative… He was among the earliest adopters of podcasting and continues to offer a wealth of insight.

• He’s joined by his LFS colleague Duncan McHugh, who is one of those people whose combination of smarts and coolness (he’s a bigshot with UBC’s CITR, among other things) would have me seething with envy were he not such a such nice guy.

• We round out the panel with a newcomer to UBC, Alfred Hermida from our School of Journalism. Professor Hermida truly is a digital news pioneer. He was a founding member of the BBCNews.com website, which has always been among the most innovative platforms going. He was with the BBC for 16 years, working in TV, radio and online. If you haven’t checked it out already, the SoJ has a number of outstanding podcast initiatives.

Date: Tuesday, January 30/07
Time: 1:00 - 3:00 pm
Location: Telestudios, Lower Level, Room 0110-2329 West Mall

If you think you can make it, I urge you to register (it’s free). And do pass this info on to anyone you think would be interested.

Northern Voice weblog conference is filling up fast!

The past two years have seen UBC as sponsors, hosts and co-organizers of the Northern Voice weblog conference. The event has been wildly successful, fully attended, and characterised by great sessions, fun parties and an energetic and friendly vibe. This year we are moving the event to a spectacular space in the main campus’s Forestry Sciences Centre, February 23-24, and we very much hope that UBC’s social software community will come out in force.

• Registration is ahead of the pace of previous years, so it’s reasonable to expect we will fill up again. Fifty bucks for two days of social software festivities!

• Actually, it’s two days and an evening. We’ve added an opening night party, Thursday, 7:00pm at Heritage Hall. There’s spaghetti for everybody (Go Boris Go!), and Lee LeFever will be talking about how he blogged and podcasted his year-long trip around the world. Admission is free, though we’re asking for a $5 donation to cover food costs.

• The schedule has been posted. I’m honoured to convene a session with D’Arcy Norman from the U of Calgary, UBC’s Jon Beasley-Murray, Chris Lott from Alaska, and Sylvia Currie (who has done great work with SFU and elsewhere)… and whoever else I can convince to show up. Hopefully it will be closer to a Hootenanny than a typical panel yak-up.

• There are some fine Moose Camp sessions shaping up. I’m sure PhotoCamp will once again be a huge success. And Scott Leslie from BCcampus has taken the lead on a Mash-Ups for Non-Programmers session in which we will endeavor to actually build some kind of data mashup — we plan to take at least two hours to do it.

• One of the neat ideas organizers came up with this year was to offer six travel bursaries of $500 each to broaden the accessibility of the event. If you know somebody elsewhere who might benefit from some assistance, the criteria for awards is on the Northern Voice site.

Last year was exhilarating and exhausting. I’m excited and tired just thinking about it, I very much hope you’ll be part of the party (figuratively and literally).

MT 3.3 Installed

Yesterday the latest version of Movable Type (3.3) was installed on our main server. I would like to thank Novak Rogic, Tyler Pirtle, and Frank Pan for interrupting their holidays to perform this operation when usage was low — and as it happens, the downtime was very short.

Our initial round of testing shows things running well. If anyone notices bugs or has questions please contact me by email: brian |DOT| lamb |AT| ubc |DOT ca

I hope everyone is enjoying a peaceful period over the holidays, and we wish you happy blogging (and everything else) in 2007.

Upgrade to MT 3.3 scheduled for December 28; Northern Voice

Just a quick notice that we will be upgrading our version of Movable Type from 3.2 to 3.3. We’ve been running a version on a test server for some time, and if further testing turns out as expected we hope to have the new version installed on December 28.

I want to thank our dedicated staffers Novak and Tyler for interrupting their holidays so we can do this at a time when usage of our weblogs tends to be pretty low. If things go as expected, there will a short period of downtime on the 28th, and we will send a follow-up notice letting you know the new version is in place.

In terms of user experience, this is a relatively minor change, and most will not notice much difference. The major improvements are in the handling of comment spam and some backend technical enhancements. Perhaps the most noticeable change is the introduction of “tags”, or simple keywords, to organize entries in addition to (or instead of) traditional categories. More on tags here.

If you have questions or concerns, feel free to leave a comment on this entry, or contact me directly by email: brian DOT lamb AT ubc DOT ca

And since this notice is clogging up your inbox already, allow me to add a plug for the Northern Voice weblog conference, hosted by UBC in partnership with a loose collection of Vancouver tech companies on February 23rd and 24th. Previous years at the downtown Robson Square campus have been great fun, and this year we are holding it at the Forestry Sciences Centre, which is providing some truly excellent spaces. The mixture of attendees in the past has been very diverse, with plenty of people new to the technology alongside many “pro” bloggers in a casual yet energized environment where a lot of peer-to-peer learning happens. We strive to make the event widely accessible, keeping the costs as low as possible (fifty bucks covers both days) and holding the main day on Saturday.

We are just putting the finishing touches on what will be another very strong schedule of speakers, panels, and open discussions on a wide range of issues pertinent to social software users. If you think you would like to attend, I’d urge you to register sooner rather than later, last year’s conference sold out well in advance and we expect it will again this year.

In any event, I wish everyone who has made it to the end of this rather long announcement a peaceful and joyful holiday season, and all the best for 2007.

Akismet A-OK

The spam wars had gotten ugly here at Weblogs@UBC lately — what was especiallly frustrating was that we were being feasted on by the same set of spammers, and the existing SpamLookup plugins were apparently powerless to repel their attacks.

Thanks to Joe for turning up and installing the Movable Type plugin for Akismet.

I had come to accommodate myself to the hundreds of notification emails clogging up my inbox every day. (I could have turned off the notifications, but this problem was not one to ignore.) The levels of spam getting through now are miniscule (I hope that legit comments are making it through OK). The current lightening of that load has been a boon to my flagging spirit — it’s been a palpable opening in the darkness.

My gratitude to all concerned.

Edublogger Hootenanny -- The Draggin Remix

We recorded the Hootenanny at Moose Camp, and now Jason has mixed the thirty minutes down to a ten minute Moosecamp Mashup (4.2 MB).

Jason has done an excellent job of pulling out the points, cleaning up the noisy bits, and layering it all into a very fast and dense package. That’s Scott’s “El Guapo’s Revenge” in the background, which he was mixing live at the beginning of the session. My only regret is that more of the points made by attendees aren’t in the final mix — but that’s largely because the microphones were in the centre of the room with the facilitators, and therefore our source audio came out clearer. So most of the talking here is done by Scott, D’Arcy, Alan, and myself. There’s some great stuff toward the end by Mark Mayo from the Genome Sciences Centre, who have set up a very sophisticated weblog network to support research, with refined aggregation and redistribution (he cautions that this stuff is “fairly non-trivial”). If you were there and hear yourself in the track, feel free to identify yourself.

I am really pleased with Jason’s mix — but I was there, and have a high tolerance for sonic chaos. I’d be interested in knowing if others are able to follow this, and if they find it a worthwhile listen.

Lesson learned — I want to do more of this type of thing in the future, but I have great deal to learn about the art of recording a room full of people talking. One obvious thing to remember in the future is to account for projector noise — gotta keep it well away from the microphones.

On a related note be sure to check out Alan’s post on social software in action, tracking the spontaneous evolution of media capturing Nancy White’s Northern Voice presentation (24 MB MP3, and Flickr images) resulting in this multimedia mix on the archive.org server:

Doesn’t this set of unplanned, network-enabled collaborations add so much more valuable context to the experience? Let’s follow the geographic trail- starting from a session presented and recorded in Vancouver BC, audio loaded to a blog in Arizona, images uploaded from Seattle, a movie produced from Hong Kong, and a distilled session summary from Portugal!

None of this was done via any snazzy, über-cool-logo IPO seeking Web 2.0 software. It would not happen inside a singular, expensive, closed wall enterprise-ware application. None of it was designed, planned, or directed. It just happened, almost in its own?, as do many meaningful social interactions. ‘Social Software’ has less to do with software than the internet protocols that allow it, and everything to do with the “social” end of it.

Social Software Salon @ UBC

The Northern Voice weblog conference (http://2006.northernvoice.ca/) is this week, and I am really excited. Our Saturday registration is fully sold out, and we are down to a handful openings for the Friday Moose Camp. This Thursday (February 9) we are bringing accomplished educational webloggers who are in town for the event out to UBC. Alan Levine (http://cogdogblog.com) from Maricopa College and D’Arcy Norman (http://www.darcynorman.net) from U of Calgary are net-hardened weblog veterans, widely-recognised innovators and very fun, very nice guys. We’ve also got my longtime co-conspirator Jason Toal (http://www.sfu.ca/~jtoal/) from SFU coming down from the mountain, who has been deeply immersed in experience design and social software since 1997.

Rather than host a formal presentation or panel, we wanted an event that better reflected the spirit of social software. So we will be holding a Social Software Salon, an opportunity for Alan, D’Arcy, Jason and myself to interview our weblog and wiki users, and for them to ask questions of us. These guys are all very well-versed in the social dynamics of blogging, academic and educational uses, and extending the online tool set. Each of them are experienced podcasters, and D’Arcy manages the Educational category of the iPodder directory. They are all enthusiastic wikiers, social bookmarkers, and skilled digital photographers. So they will be interested in what you are doing, and between them can converse on any practical, technical, web design or technocultural question you throw at them.

The Social Software Salon is at Telestudios, Room 0110 - 2329 West Mall (the University Services Building) from 12:30-3:00. The session is a drop-in model. There is no beginning or end, come and go as you like. You may talk, listen in, blog, take pictures, record audio or do something else. There’s no requirement to route conversation through the facilitators — digressions and diversions will be encouraged. Armed guards will ensure things don’t get too rowdy. We may stay together as one group, we might split up. I would like to record audio of at least some of the conversations for podcasts, but if that makes you uncomfortable we can turn off the mic. My hope is that we will end up with a collection of audio clips and links that we could turn into a digital snapshot of what social social software is like at UBC and elsewhere in the region right now. I’ve been watching the use of these tools develop over the past couple years, and there are some amazing stories to tell.

The first 20 or so arrivals will receive an amazing superprize of catered sandwiches and drinks. If you’d like to pre-schedule a short time slot (5-15 min) with our guests, if there’s a topic or guest you especially wish to talk with, or if you have any questions about this unorthodox gathering, please drop me an email at: brian.lamb@ubc.ca

If you can’t make it to the session, maybe you can join us by Skype or audio chat?

Once again, Telestudios, Room 0110 2329 West Mall (the University Services Building). 12:30-3:00 — I am certain it’s going to be a fun and provocative time, and it will be even better if you join us. Please feel free to forward this invitation to anyone who you believe would be interested.

Northern Voice Weblog Conference @ UBC -- Schedule Posted, Volunteers Wanted

UBC is proud to be the host and co-organizer of the Northern Voice Weblog Conference, February 10-11, 2006 at its downtown Robson Square Campus. Last year’s event was wildly successful, fully attended and enjoyed by all.

Due to popular demand, the conference has expanded. We will once again have a presentation-and-discussion based event on Saturday, February 11th, featuring a great mix of big-name bloggers and local talent (schedule here). On Friday, we will be holding Moose Camp, a self-organizing event that will be whatever the participants want it to be.

We should note that Weblogs@UBC’s Project Discoordinator is nominally in charge of the “Blogging in Education” panel, and it features three Vancouver-based bloggers: Daniel Mosquin of the wildly popular UBC Botanical Gardens Blog and Photo of the Day, Dave Smulders from BCIT’s blogging project, and UBC’s Jon Beasley-Murray (Posthegemonic Musings, and Latin America on Screen).

Last year we had to turn people away because we reached full capacity. We urge you to Register Now. Pre-registration for this event is $30 for one day (either the Friday Moose Camp or the Saturday Conference) and $50 for the whole event. For pre-registration, we accept payment via Visa, Mastercard and Canadian-currency cheque.

We are also looking for a few more volunteers. For one or two hours of work, each volunteer receives free registration for that day and a much-coveted Northern Voice t-shirt. If last year’s event is any indication, you also get to have big fun. If you are willing to pitch in at a registration table or help people find the rooms, send an email to brian.lamb@ubc.ca.

MovableType 3.2 Upgrade Success

Dear bloggers! Our upgrade is a success. In the next few weeks, we will test and implement several new features exclusive to MovableType 3.2, including a style-switching plugin with which you can easily toggle between different style templates offered here.

Meanwhile, here are some notable issues:

• We seem to have lost the login page that imitates the look of this site. Please rest assure that you can still type “weblogs.elearning.ubc.ca/login” to access the default login page (like what you had before in the days of MT 2.64). In order to maintain consistency, we will attempt in the next while to retrieve Michelle Chua’s nicely integrated login page.

• The “view site” button so conveniently located on the top toolbar has been moved down slightly to the right. It is less conspicuous than the previous location. Here is a screenshot:
  
  

• MovableType 3.2 uses brand new templates with more complex structure. Nevertheless, your weblogs will keep using the old templates until you refresh them. The old templates work perfectly with our current version. Please choose to update your templates ONLY IF you wish to use the new styles. Please contact us if you need help making a decision. Here is a screenshot that indicates where you can refresh your templates to 3.2 style (which is on your templates page):
  
  

• For publishing options, “draft” is now “unpublished,” “future” is now “scheduled,” “publish” is now “published.” And finally, “weblog config” is now “settings.”

• If you are wondering why on the bottom of your sidebar it still says “MovableType 3.17,” then please try to either rebuild your blog or make a new entry. I apologize on MT’s behalf for this lack of automaticity.

As you can see, we no longer have Blacklist. We are using the fully-integrated SpamLookup to prevent comment spams.

Again, please don’t hesitate to e-mail Frank when you have any question or concern.