Fortunately, I do have some of the technical skills the course requires and know how to find my way in a distributed environment. However, as I mentioned before, I was consuming, commenting and contributing to f2f encounters and trying to digest them in the blog as well so I did not post anything FOC08 on my blog until yesterday. Although there is no control or pressure whatsoever (I am a dilettante and am not doing it because of a certificate), the fact that I have decided to become part of the process, somehow requires some sort of responsibility. And this has nothing to do with community or clubs – but will post on this later.
I started posting first in the email forum, which is easier and a more immediate way of establishing contact than a blog. The curious being in me lurked for some time, trying to get the gist of the flow, observe people’s moves and interventions: some making contributions, others asking for help and some directing the conversation. I read the reactions/approaches and , malgré moi (something I still need to control), flamed (reacted to some too strongly). I have finally started posting and will try, from now onwards to link, thread, weave in and discuss the various posts or comment on the blogs.
Note on the side: for the coders out there, it would be wonderful if someone would come up with a widget or plugin which would automatically send all the posts we make in other forums to our blogs (like twitter does). This would bring together all the data we have dispersed around the web into our own portfolio.
I also went over some material I had stored and contributed to the course wiki in the extra readings area. This recording of a presentation made by James Farmer to the 2005 EVO Session on weblogging took me some time to convert into an ogg file but is worth listening to. I hope I can recover the slides – I must have them in some back-up file in my old computer. Anyway, James talks about facilitating a community of inquiry using blogs and message boards, the topic of this week – I am a bit behind in some areas and advanced in others 🙂 If you are more visual that aural and have some time for reading, then you can also have a go at in more detail in his paper.