Lorelle vanFossen and @shakingtree

VPRO on their WPMU environments

Joost van der Valk (@yoast)

Organizer Erno Hannink

Organizer Kaj Rietberg

Liz Strauss

WordCampNL visitors

Pimped iPhones

Heather from Automattic

Anne Helmond and Lorelle VanFossen

More photos in my WordCampNL 2009 Flickr set.

Yesterday I attended the first ever WordCampNL where I gave a talk about “The blog as database. Blogging and the blogosphere through the eyes of software and search engines.” I talked about how research can tell us something about current blogging culture through three concepts:

1. Freshness Fetish (an internal wish to update, the consensus within the blogosphere to blog daily and the external force of the search engines that rank their content according to freshness)
2. Software-Engine relations (the role of the search engines in indexing, shaping and constructing our blogosphere and blogging behavior)
3. Template Culture (how the software also defines the aesthetics of blogging and the rise of the ‘widgetized self’ – see a previous post on The widgetized self and the modding user in the blogosphere

The talk was also recorded for WordPress.TV and I will keep you posted when the video material is online. [Update: Video now available]

The first Dutch edition of WordPress was a great success thanks to the organizers. I also got a chance to meet my ex-colleague of the Blog Herald and long time blogging inspiration Lorelle VanFossen and successful blogger Liz Strauss.

On top of that I was actually able to help some people with some WordPress questions. Loved it!

Photo by Daphne Channa Horn (whose blog I built ;)

Madbello from about:blank posted a small video preview of WordCampNL

Op dinsdag 27 oktober van 14.00 uur tot 17.00 uur geef ik een cursus bloggen (beginners & gevorderden) voor studenten (aanmelding via de  ASVA studentenunie).  Een van de onderdelen van de cursus is: Waarom zou ik als student gaan bloggen? Hoe kan ik mijn blog gebruiken voor mijn scriptie of onderzoek? Hoe kan Twitter dienen als aanvulling op mijn blog en hoe koppel ik deze twee aan elkaar? Daarnaast zullen we gaan kijken naar de blogosphere als waardevolle informatiebron. Hoe vind ik de juiste bronnen en waar?

De rest van de cursus zal naar wens van de cursisten worden ingevuld. Tijdens de cursus is er ruimte is voor vragen over plugins, widgets, taggen, layout, design, schrijven, search engine optimization en meer. Heb je specifiek een onderwerp of vraag die je graag behandeld zou willen hebben? Laat deze vraag of opmerking dan achter in de comments of stuur een e-mail.

Hoewel het een praktische cursus is, kan ik de onderstaande literatuur aanraden ter voorbereiding:

Literatuur

boyd, danah. “A Blogger’s Blog: Exploring the Definition of a Medium.” Reconstruction, 6 (4), November 2006. http://www.danah.org/papers/ABloggersBlog.pdf

Hourihan, Meg. “What We’re Doing When We Blog.“ O’Reilly Network, June 13, 2002,  www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2002/06/13/megnut.html

Walker, Jill Blogging From Inside the Ivory Tower. Peter Lang. 2006. 127-138. https://bora.uib.no/bitstream/1956/1846/1/Walker-Uses-of-Blogs.pdf

Walker, Jill. Blogging as a tool for reflection and learning (Video)

Over mij

Ik ben docent-promovendus Nieuwe Media aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam. In 2006 was ik als MA student Nieuwe Media verantwoordelijk voor het opzetten van de Masters of Media blog. Begin 2008 ben ik cum laude afgestudeerd op een onderzoek naar de relatie tussen blog software en zoekmachines. Op dit moment geef ik voor de tweede keer het 3e jaars BA vak Digitale Praktijken met collega Esther Weltevrede waarbij bloggen op Metareporter centraal staat.

I will be speaking (in English) at the first WordCampNL edition in Utrecht on 31 October 2009. I will be presenting my research on Blogging for Engines filled with updates and practical implications for bloggers. Please join us if you’re interested in blogging/WordPress and I hope to see you there!

Summary:
Blogging is often seen as a new form of journalism, an online diary or a democratising medium which potentially gives every citizen a voice. However, what can we say about blogging and the blogosphere if we look at blogs from within the medium? In other words, what is blogging when we look at the software blogs are made with?

Anne Helmond graduated from the University of Amsterdam with a study on WordPress, the leading blog software. This research focuses on how blog software and search engines arose at the same time (1999) and have since established a tight relationship. What does this mean for bloggers, blogs and the blogosphere if we look beyond search engine optimization?

On April 20, 2009 Annette Wolfsberger from Lab for Culture interviewed me via Skype chat about cultural blogging. We talked about blogging cultural events and conferences and how to professionalise this field.

Steps to professionalising blogging within culture:

• Getting started with blogging;
• Building a profile;
• Live blog conferences in exchange for a ticket;
• Live blog conferences for compensation.

Read the whole interview on the Lab for Culture website.