Please take a few mins to complete this survey on Social media Usage in HEIs.

Introductory session

The first thing you noticed as soon as you walk into the lecture hall where the introductory talks were being held is the Twitterwall on the screen. This is the second event I’ve attended that had this and I find it really livens up the mood and certainly grabs people’s attention. Just have a look at the tweets…

catmachine:  http://twitpic.com/bx04p – Tweets going up on this big screen… so if I post a photo of it, instant recursion.

marcus67:  Just so I can get on the screen again!

boagworld:  They have a twitterwall at #iwmw2009. That is asking for trouble! One could write very rude messages. http://twitpic.com/bx0dh

gmcaleese:  enjoying the twitter wall

I found it quite funny and everyone seemed to have a bit of fun with it which was quite expected, if you ask me Though if there was one thing I would say is, I wished the background to the text wasn’t black as it was hard to see the coloured text on that background. Possibly next time use white or a light colour so it could be easier on the eyes??? (Just a suggestion!)

Keith Brooke’s introductory slides and speech

If you flick through the slides, you’ll see all the wonderful descriptions and pictures of University of Essex and also the web team who are involved in IWMW2009. There are some hilarious pictures up there, so be sure to check it out! You won’t regret it !

Keynote Speech – Derek Law (Strathclyde Uni) “Headlights on Dark Roads” this is a title of a song by Snow Patrol btw…

Derek Law – “Headlight on Dark Roads” IWMW2009 from Liz Azyan on Vimeo.

I have to say I’m really impressed the way the slides were being made immediately before and during the actual speech. This is a very rare occasion at events like this, so a big “Well done” to the organizers for being on top of things. Its the little things that really matter sometimes and I was pleasantly pleased. Thank you UKOLN!

Derek starts off by asking by saying “Everyone thinks it is a good thing to have a library, but no one is very clear why” (via @iwmwlive).  This is a very fair point just looking by the way people depend on the internet to find out mostly about anything.  Derek also stresses that “we have reached a fundamental tipping point in HEI (via @boagworld)”. And this seems to be down to the failure of of libraries or librarians causing complancey, lack of underpinning philosophy and the rise of managerial technocrat (via @jaducms).

The failure to engage with technology…

There is definitely a sense of failure to understand what do we actually do with technology once we have it i.e. failure to engage with e-resources (via @jaducms). Its almost like having an iPhone or any smart phone for that matter and only using it for phone calls and text. You have it because its nice and shiny and you were told it could do all those fancy technical dancing features .. but in the end you end up using it like any old phone anyways.  It seems that we are more obsessed with licenses and digitizing oddities (via @jaducms).

There was an interesting bit in Derek’s presentation that made me sit up in my seat which was…

jamesclay:  “Currently, 17.8% of all Twitter traffic in the United Kingdom consists of status updates from @stephenfry ”

jamesclay:  “A further 11% is his 680,176 followers replying ‘ @stephenfry LOL!’ & ‘ @stephenfry EXACTLY the same thing happened to me’”

I definitely thought that was hilarious because I follow @stephenfry myself and he definitely tweets his pants off! LOL

On a more serious note, Derek mentioned that there is a possibility of shifting college life to google and some uni’s are already using google mail too! (via @jaducms) I wish my uni would use google mail…:-s So there’s definitely a possibility for this to happen as its really not that big of a leap… or is it?

Images replacing words….

So according to Derek, “we are moving to image-based cultural reference points, rather than word-based” (via @iwmwlive). I couldn’t agree more, I mean I even find myself moving another step forward and saying that I think we are moving to video-based cultural reference points as I use YouTube as my primary search engine just as much as I use google. I mean lets look at some of the facts pointed out from the twitterstream

iwmwlive:  We are moving away from authority to consensus: 57% of teenagers create content for the Internet

pierotintori:  #iwmw2009 “73% of students use the internet more than the library”

Why write it when you can record it???

As an academic myself who finds writing papers quite fiddly and would rather blog, I definitely find Law’s opinion on a new way of documenting research methodologies to be really appealing!

iwmwlive:  why write a research methodology when you can just video the experiment and upload it?

pierotintori:  #iwmw2009 why write a science paper, create a video and publish it http://www.jove.com/

Conclusion….So what is the Digital Overlap Strategy?

This was actually something I felt I have to share.. its certainly something you could take away and implement straight away at your institutions! The way you do it is… BY KEEPING YOUR FINGERS CROSS!

iwmwlive:  most universities are employing a digital overlap strategy to deal with the problems they are facing.

marydeeo:  Law: “digital overlap strategy” – cross your fingers and hope for the best

webpackets:   – liking the digital overlap strategy – am going to use that one

kammer:  Excellent anecdote from Derek Law ultimately defining ‘digital overlap strategy’ (ie keep your fingers crossed). All too familiar.

Links for this session worth checking out!

1. Oxford library website (via @j4)
2. OpenWetWare – marydeeo: Law: social networking moving into real research apps, OpenWetware allows sharing among scientists
3. Journal of Visualized Experiments (Jove) – Love it!
4. Open Research Notebooks
5. Catch my earlier review of IWMW2009 – The good, the bad and the ugly

Hope you’ve found this useful!

Liz xx

List of UK Universities and their Departments on YouTube

As some of you might already know, I’ve long been a local government online engagement researcher and have been concentrating alot of my research energy in that sector. But now I’m branching out into other sectors and I’m happy to say that #imwm2009 was my first HEI gig! I even accidently ended up conducting my own barcamp on social media! Ah, it seems the only way to get me to talk at unconferences nowadays is to ambush me LOL. Same thing happened to me at another unconference for #localgovcamp, which you can check out here.

Please take a few mins to complete this survey on Social media Usage in HEIs.

I’ll be writing other blog posts about the event in separate posts so you won’t have to keep scrolling down a long post. Stay tuned to those posts that will be tweeted on my twitter feed @Liz_Azyan. To get updates, you have to start following me  :-)

Feedback, feedback, feedback….

The good stuff…

Let’s talk a bit about some of the stuff I liked about the conference…

There were alot of things that this conference did get right in terms of using social media to fully aggregate the workshops content effectively online. Check out how #iwmw2009 came alive online and created real-time conversations and feedback …

1. Slideshare of all presentation slides (Excellent!) – I always find myself needing to ask for these at events and often take a long time to become available. So, well done!
2. The Twitter Feed @IWMW used to push out general content throughout the workshop.
3. The CoverItLive! live blogging at IWMWlive (twitter feed specifically for this live event) was made available to allow people to follow the event live as its happening and also works well as a documented version of all tweets throughout the event.
4. The IWMWBlog was a great central point to catch all the video interviews, summaries of presentations, as well as other relevant stuff.
5. The live streaming of the event! Brilliant! First time I’ve seen 2 camera ladies actually instead of camera men! Did anyone else notice this???
6. The tag for the event. Now there are some things I like about the tag and some things I don’t like. I like the fact that you can distinguish the talks by adding either #p1, #p2 etc to the #iwmw2009 tag. But I really feel that the tag should have been shorter i.e. #iwmw09 or even #iwmw. Everyone knows when tweeting, chars are really valuable. Even taking off 2 chars can help people to retweet (RT) easily without cutting or shortening any tweets.
7. The IWMW2009 Netvibes page. I really like the use of Netvibes, it allows you to see all the content and media stuff on one page and you can configure it according to your own preference.
8. The IWMW2009 official blogger – I know there was an official blogger (which I regretfully forgot the name of ). I tried to find her name on the UKOLN website and blog but failed to find it. Please let me know if anyone else finds it! I thought it was a brilliant idea to get a designated person to cover the event. This is becoming more and more of an essential ingredient for any event. I think in the near future, events management everywhere will have to invite in official bloggers just like conferences have press boxes, events like this will have blogger boxes! Its not an easy task and is often more tiring than one might think. But I feel the official blogger for this event did a spectacular job and she definitely deserves alot of praise for what she’s done. Well done!

Other stuff I liked…

1. The marque where we had all our meals… felt like we were at a wedding the way the table and marque was setup with chandeliers hanging everywhere.
2. The food was good too, a great variety for meat eaters as well as vegetarians. There was also BBQ for one of the evenings which was sponsored by Jadu. Thanks @surajkika (CEO of Jadu)!
3. The social activites organized throughout the event… the outings and barcamps were all designed so we could actually do some networking. This is absolutely essential for any event because often when people come a long way to attend events, they are not only there for the content but mostly so for the people they meet there. And with social media making contents from events available in real-time, surely the only thing setting the delegates apart from the online event followers is the networking and face-to-face interaction.

Things I didn’t like…

1. The fact that I couldn’t connect to the internet in accommodation. Why wasn’t the setup instructions included in the  accommodation welcome pack or found in the room? Why couldn’t it be made available through all the social media channels i.e. Twitter, blog, main event website? If it was made available, it was not clearly stated. Being at an event where it was highly likely to be attended by ‘geeks’, it was disappointing that most of us couldn’t get onto the internet whilst staying in the accommodation. Plus what made things worst was, even my 3G dongle didn’t have coverage at times inside the accommodation and in the main lecture hall. The fact that you couldn’t use the phone in the room also caused a hassle to get direct connection to IT support who’s phone number was not provided meaning you had to go down to their offices to get help… which is usually after office hours after our talks/activities are finished.
2. No power plugs/extension for laptops in main lecture hall. I think this is a new thing event organizers have to pay attention to now that more people are tweeting during events. My laptop died a couple of hours into the event which really made me lose interest in tweeting….
3. Difficulty trying to find out what talk is up next. There should be an easy way to look up where to go and what talk is next up in the schedule without having to look through pieces of paper. Like having the schedule behind name tags, like it was done at another event I attended in NYC that you can see here.

So those are my first impressions of the IWMW2009 event, look out for more blog posts to come!

In the meantime, don’t forget to check out…

1. The HEIs Social Media usage research survey (it’ll only take 10 mins for your time and you have the opportunity to win an iPod Touch, thanks to Jadu!)
2. My UK Universities Twitterleague (currently being updated manually by myself -hoping to create a database with some help of volunteers? – so please bare with me regarding updates)
3. My UK Universities Facebook Fan Pages list
4. My UK Universities Twitter Accounts list

Hope you’ve found this useful!

Follow me on Twitter @Liz_Azyan

Today I made the wrong decision to stay away from Twitter to concentrate on some thesis writing. However thanks to @TimCooperUK, I’ve been alerted on a recent activity on twitter that has been creating quite a lot of buzz if you search the hashtag #amazonfail. So I’ve decided to update an article I wrote recently regarding “People Power on Twitter” for the Moldova protest. You can find the original post below.

Apparently, Amazon is deleting the rankings (de-rank) of LBGT and erotica books. Though this has possibly just caught on fire today, this has been going on since February. The response the authors affected got from Amazon was this

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Some people are already closing their Amazon accounts and threatening to stop buying from Amazon. I’ve never seen hashtag updated so fast! I’m beginning to wonder if Twitter will crash because of it! They’ve even already managed to make a logo out of it! That was quick!

Though what will be more interesting to see is what will happen tomorrow? What type of impact, action, maybe backtrack (like Facebook case) or PR response will come from Amazon. Will we see a 24 hour turnaround in response to Twitter “Collectively Organizing and Mobilizing Action”? Will customer voices on Twitter be heard loud and clear? Will Twitterers #amazonfail come together to launch a petition to demand Amazon to get their act together (Just updated – here it is http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/in-protest-at-amazons-new-adult-policy? Are we going to see a Facebook Group created to boycott Amazon until they change their ways (spoke to soon – its here http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=70927484220)?

Here’s a snapshot of #amazonfail

Here’s a video on Youtube that popped out around an hour ago

The great thing about all this is… I’m sure I’ll find out in REAL-TIME what the outcome will be. I don’t have to wait for the news to come on, or a newspaper website to publish it, or even someone to blog about it. All I need to do is check #amazonfail on Twitter or even better yet, I’m sure one of my friends on Twitter will tweet it or RT it to me. Let’s see what “Collective Organizing and Mobilizing Action” (COMA) on Twitter will result in this time.

Here are some links talking in more details about #amazonfail

1. #Amazonfail and the politics of anti-corporate cyberactivism
2. An open letter to Jeff Bezos
3. Amazon Rank
4. Amazon Follies
5. GoogleBomb AmazonFail
6. Why Is Amazon Removing The Sales Rankings From Gay, Lesbian Books?
7. Amazon Accused of Removing Gay Books from Rankings

Original post:
There’s so much going around Twitter these days, its quite hard to keep up with its news and progress. We hear Twitter being mentioned everyday now and it might be a surprise to some people that those news headlines regarding Twitter are no longer confined to “What are you doing?” chit chats or the newest celebrity using twitter.

Just take an example of what is currently happening in the Moldova protest. People are “Collectively Organizing and Mobilizing Action” (COMA), which is from where I stand, is the true value of Twitter. Some people have called it the “Twitter Revolution” because of Twitters ability to report real-time events in a simplistic micro-blogging method of tagging each conversation with #pman. The #pman hashtag is then picked up by twitter’s search results at search.twitter.com . Then through these tags, more links and social media channels can be shared to update #pman with Flickr pics or Facebook group links and other social/new media and mobile applications.

I feel Flickr and other photographic new media outlets are also very powerful in this protest because everyone knows that “a picture is worth a thousand words”. And not to be outdone, YouTube ,Vimeo and embedded videos from various news and other websites can also play an important part of social media if something significant happens like the incident where a man died at the G20 protest in London (link to YouTube video).

Here is an interview with an internet expert for global politics (Evgeny Morozov) talking about just how much of a factor is Twitter in the Moldova protest.

Moldova Twitter Revolution

So there could be a 1,000,001 reasons for governments, organizations or individuals to ignore or resist social media, however there are also 1,000,001 reasons to join the Twitter Revolution of “Collectively Organizing and Mobilizing Action” (COMA).