Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Discussion leader:
Discussion  Susan Mernit

Panelists: Kevin Marks, Epeus epigone
Frank Paynter, Sandhill Trek
Amy Wohl, Amy Wohl
Dan Bricklin, Trellix
Scott Brodeur, Mass-Live.com/weblogs
Scott Johnson, Feedster

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• Kevin Marks: I realized that I can read thoughts–but only if people write them down first. Our thoughts are constrained by the way we write them down.
  
  Writing on IRC–tendency to flirtation, chatting–it’s easy for someone to destroy by shoulting abuse. The tendency for a WIki is consensus–debate doesn’t work because stark disgreement makes people go back and forth erasing what the other side wrote. Weblog–spontaneous, personal, but you are motivated to be more coherent that IRC because it’s a little bit permanent.
• Amy Wohl: There are a lot of things I want to do on my weblog–people will say, “Oh yes, you can do that, you just have to do some programming.” If, in order to use your product, the user has to refrain from doing something they want to do, or learn a new programming skill to make it work. For most activities, people do not want to learn a whole new skill.
• Dave Winer: I designed the software that you’re using. People really want it to run inside the web browser. There are huge limitations imposed by that.
• Amy Wohl: Blogs may well be the personal websites of the future. I am planning to take down my website.
• Dan Bricklin: Not a lot of money gets spend on browser software. People like the browser-based model because then they don’t have to install it on all their computers. I use a non-blogging tool to do my weblog and the same tool edits my photos.
• Stephen Delaney: Can you imagine doing long division in Roman numerals? The user interface makes a big difference to what you can do.
• Frank Paynter: I’m a blogging community member, but I’m not some high-tech hotshot. I argued with Kevin Marks a bit online, and friends warned me, “Kevin is a good guy, so you don’t want to offend him–and he’s a genius so you don’t want to argue with him.” [On the IRC feed, JoiIto adds “And Kevin’s got an upper class accent that’s hard to argue with.]
• Scott Brodeur: Would Moses be a blogger? Who knows? But if Moses came down off the mountain today with two stone tablets, a programmer would say, “Let’s throw that into a searchable database.” A designer would say, “Two words: Flash treatment.” I think weblogs are useful because they are low fi and easy to do.
• Rick Heller: My nephew, who just started college, is using his blog to keep in touch with high school friends–it takes the place of letters back and forth.
• Scott Johnson: There are two good ways to protect yourself from losing your posts when you try to post through a browser. The first is something I call the blogger’s condom: before you post, use Control-A, Control-C to select all your text and copy it to the clipboard. The other is to download a program called SquirrelMail, which–if you happen to shut down your browser accidentally–will ask if you want to save the text you were writing.
• Carol Dodson: Three out of eight people have already quit using our weblog because they lost stuff they posted. If there was one thing you could fix, could you please fix that? (Software: Manila)
• Someone in the back row, if you know his name please post a comment: Usability is the number one issue for getting teachers to use weblogs. Teachers need to be able to use blogs without having to know how to do technical support. (Software: Movable Type)
• Stephen West: How much would I pay for good blogging software? $100–provided it let me do free upgrades for a reasonable period, and didn’t require me to buy a totally new software every few years the way Microsoft does.
• Susan Mernit: This is obviously the beginning of a really conversation about what we need in blogware. If you want to add input in the next couple of days, send it to smernit-AT-aol-DOT-com

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You can see all the blogs blogging bloggercon, in real time, at the feedster feed of Bloggercon. Anybody want to rewrite that into an official BloggerCon tongue-twister?

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