Sessions at Podcamp:
Knowledge of technology
Observing the difficulties some people had with setting the proxy on their web browsers (in order to connect to the Net using the wireless network), M was rather surprised at how little tech knowledge some at Podcamp actually had/have. I’m not that surprised, myself - as it’s not about the tech as such, but about what you do with the tech. Of course there were many geeks there, but there were just as many who were there because they are interested in using the technology to connect, to learn, and to collaborate with others - and not because they were interested in talking code. The sessions that people ran on the day prove it - not that many sessions were actually technical.
I think it was Tama Leaver (yes it was Tama) who pointed out that those who have no understanding of the whole Web 2.0 thing get overwhelmed whenever they hear about all those amazing new tools and toys out there, when in reality there are only a few concepts you need to understand and once you get those you’re set - and there’s no real need to get your hands dirty with all the tech detail (I personally prefer to leave it to the IT types to troubleshoot when needed).
Community?
One of the sessions I attended was On passion and the social web, presented by Jinnan Cai, of Buzka. Jinnan talked about tapping into people’s desires for emotional connection and identification with each other, and how this need for connection and relationship can get transfered on to products (e.g. Apple fans). The Web facilitates this sort of connection very well, allowing people to connect with each other - to form “passion-centric online communities”. Some examples Jinnan cited: Minti, dogster, vampirefreaks.com, lolcats, cats that look like Hitler…
Trevor Bennett (podcaster, educator from Edith Cowan Uni) who was in the audience asked some interesting questions: what does it mean to be in a community? Does being able to get together online and laugh at the latest cute furry creature and share our cute furry creature with everyone else mean that we have a community? Many in the audience interpreted Trevor’s question to be merely criticising online interactions as being somehow lesser than face-to-face interactions and objected to this, but I don’t think that that was all Trevor was trying to say. I think he had a point. Is it all about getting people all fired up about their latest toy, and getting them all excited about buying their next latest toy? Or we have interaction of the look-at-this-cute/funny/cool/silly/gross-thing variety, or “let’s all of us talk about fad X in all our infinitely individual ways” - it is very superficial and, dare I say it, not very beneficial (beyond making us all feel good). What does it mean to be a member of an online community? What responsibilities do we have to each other? Are we only there for the fun stuff and the cool stuff?
Related to this is Cameron Reilly’s comment on the whole Podcamp shebang:
I still get the feeling though that we geeks, we early adopters of the new new tools, the Twitterers, the Facebookeranians*, the SecondLifers, the podcasters and bloggers, are still running around playing with these shiny new toys like 3 year-olds in a sandbox. When I look at people at gatherings like those over the last couple of days, I think about how wealthy and privileged we are. We all sit around with our shiny Macbooks and our iPhones and play with our communication toys which let us talk to enormous numbers of people all over the world, and yet we seem to lack direction. Whenever we get together at events like Podcamp or MODM, whilst there is a certain level of geek community bonding and a few impassioned conversations, that there is a general lack of BIG IDEAS. I’m including myself in this by the way. I come away from these events feeling slightly hollow, like a great opportunity has been missed. That there should be more going on than just getting together, having a few drinks, comparing toys, exchanging a few anecdotes, swapping business cards. Shouldn’t we be doing something more when we get together?
What should we be doing? I don’t know. I would like to feel like I am contributing or creating something, but what it is, I have no idea. There is a lot to learn and explore, sure, but I’m starting to feel like I need to apply and engage more deeply with the ideas. Stop flitting from bright shiny thing to bright shiny thing. Maybe I need to be doing more to get library folks more engaged in all of this? What should I be doing? What do you think?
*Facebookeranians: this makes me think of Facebook users as fluffy, yappy creatures, like Pomeranians. Great term!
