Here comes the time of the year when Calls for Participation at conferences, workshops and seminars circulate around and you don’t know where to submit or where to go while the deadlines are approaching. It’s especially hectic if you’re conducting research on your own, and invited to be a Program Committee or/and a reviewer at some event or publication (Internet scholars know what I’m talking about).

With the tradition of the last year’s workshop Making Sense of Microposts or #MSM11, this year the big World Wide Web 2012 or WWW12 conference, is happening in April in Lyon, France. The official keynote speakers are announced,  and we can expect an interesting forum for researchers and practitioners in Web technologies to discuss and exchange positions on current and emergent Web topics.

This year, I’m again in the Programme Committee at one of the workshops: #MSM12 or Making Sense of Microposts, so I encourage you to submit your papers, findings, and demos – I’m looking forward to see you this spring in France.  Below is the rationale for the workshop.

With the appearance and expansion of Twitter, Facebook Like, Foursquare, and similar low-effort publishing services, the effort required to participate on the Web is getting lower and lower. Enormous quantities of small user input are being piped into the data streams of the Web, leading to a rate of growth which has never been witnessed before. We refer to such small user inputs as Microposts, these can range from ‘checkin’ at a location on a geo-social networking site – allowing users to inform their friends of their current location – through to a status update on a social networking platform. The production of such masses of data, combined with the disparate and heterogeneous nature of the topics which Microposts refer to, requires new techniques to glean knowledge from them and provide useful services and applications sitting atop the amalgamation of this data.

This workshop: “Making Sense of Microposts” (MSM), will cover the topics of: information extraction and leveraging of semantics from Microposts; making use of Microposts’ semantics; and social studies related to Microposts that could help build appealing new systems based on this type of data. The workshop has two main points of difference from existing Social Semantic Web workshops which partially treat Microposts: (a) the interdisciplinary nature and interest to bring together the Social Sciences and Semantic Web research; (b) the focus on Microposts’ usage in making appealing tools for Web users and showing how the Semantic Web makes a difference in those applications. One of the main goals of MSM is to bring together the researchers from various disciplines treating the question of Microposts from different angles. We are particularly interested in submissions describing theories from the Social Sciences related to the creation and potential usage of Microposts that could inspire the creation of data structures, ontologies and finally interfaces that make advanced use of Microposts. We also envisage submissions that describe the application of Semantic Web technologies, either in enabling the inference of new facts, or the gleaning and enriching of knowledge from collections of such data.”

I wrote an article at the Scientific American blog yesterday highlighting digital divides – or digital inequalities, if you prefer – from other perspectives, pointing out that these digital divides go far beyond pure infrastructure issues and need to become a key focus of engagement for profit and nonprofit organizations as they continue their missions to develop programs for social and digital inclusion.

Everyone’s talking about internet access: from European media to US media, stressing connectivity issues that merely compounding existing social inequalities as “new digital divides”, as if they are something new in the networked society. They are not.

According to the available measures, the selected indicators (such as gender, income, occupation, online experience, internet penetration, type of internet connection, etc.) are significantly related to the levels of (one’s country) per capita GDP, literacies, education, level of democratization, etc.

In Europe, Eurostat (the statistical office of the European Commission) conduct surveys and publish reports on Internet use (data I used for my research and other International reports and stats), whilst the EU’s Digital Agenda for Europe strategy make and initiate action plans for taking care of the information society in Europe.

As I wrote, the notion of being social on the Internet is constantly evolving since we are connected not only via computers but also via mobile phones or handheld devices. The web is getting more powerful and social: new messaging services emerge each month; streamed media is becoming real even for the non-technical consumer; Google reshapes its services like a child rearranging building blocks; new ideas in federated rather than centralized systems are being explored, and more. The frequent change in layouts, privacy settings and interaction tools indicate that online dynamics require users to possess new classes of knowledge and skills if they are to adapt to such major changes on Facebook, Google, Twitter and other places in order to navigate and socialize online.

Governments are struck by internet access and computers on the top level but don’t consider other factors important to decreasing already widening digital inequalities. But in the last 24 hrs I’ve received enormous amounts of feedback, with emails, comments, replies and reactions from the readers, twitterers (those following at @DanicaR), software engineers, education and e-learning specialists, media and policy makers, and comments from people in the Information-Communication Technologies. I’m grateful for your feedback as as I think I’ve hit a hot spot to which everyone in the Internet industry and policy sectors has to pay attention. It is a very interesting topic but also a complex one, and it will be a burning subject in the years to come as it influences all areas in the Information Networked Society.

Also take a look at a post from the Computer World. This is a very interesting reaction on my SciAm article by Simon Phipps who also gave some practical examples of digital inequalities/divides that illustrated how broad the categories at hand actually are. They include: teaching children and adults to use “transferrable concepts and skills using a variety of open source software; insisting that public data needs to be paid for because some companies might profit from it, with the result that only companies who can profit from it can use it; privacy controls which pretend that “privacy” is a synonym for “keeping secrets”, rather than “the ability to assert control over a social situation” as one researcher insightfully observes”, etc.

Governments worldwide must create more efficient strategies and programs to overcome such inequalities and not just provide techno-infrastructure. They can do this by creating, developing and fostering knowledge societies in order to decrease the existing divides, and also by cultivating communities of practice and emphasizing over and over that learning (formal, non formal, life-long) is social and by engaging and interacting on social networks and deploying social media services. Of course, in the future we need to get more concrete on those skills online, as well as the behaviours through which they are expressed. We also need to create strategies and implementation plans for how they can be cultivated and developed. I think here foremost of the communication skills, literacy, participatory, critical skills, that are enabling us to socialize, network, learn, and collaborate.

Feel free to comment on the types of digital divide and inequalities you have noticed or experienced lately. Your observations and thoughts are welcomed – this is going much further than I expected!

Finally, news of my own progress. A book chapter I wrote should be published next year I hope. Meanwhile, my dissertation has entered the final phase of qualitative research and writing up. Now more than ever I am ready for new engagements and collaborations, projects and initiatives in the upcoming year – 2012. Feel free to email me if you are interested in working/collaborating with me – or indeed if your company needs me! Wishing you the very best for the holidays!

Photo credits: mimax

Tomorrow morning I’m giving an hour session for scientists who want to get familiar with collaborative social media tools for the next three days of the conference ScienceOnline. You know that I was here [Research Triangle Park, NC] last year and that we talked about open access in developed countries, now with the accelerating emerge of participative media and their implementation in everyday life, including any professional area, there are some normative literacy’s to embrace in order to communicate and contribute.

As you know I do not make presentations in a classic way, with too much (or none) words, since this is workshop I will be demonstrating and practice interaction with people who are attending and will report, network and micro blog in the next few days on ScienceOnline2010.

Slide are uploaded on SlideShare, they are fluid in a way that I will add/talk/address/demo other issues on social media, social networks and science.

Today I’ve tested for the very first time Qik – mobile live streaming and sharing tool that connects mobile and social technologies. I had a thought after this demo video with my colleague at UN about implementation of mobile video streaming into not only broadcasting conferences, events, but also in edu technology. The latest news from Qik blog is participating in edu-tech conference where Qik videos will be mapped on Google Earth in its worldwide demonstration so educators from all over the world can test this tool in their classrooms.

Some concern I’m sharing is that streaming over the phone cannot be possible anytime, everywhere, depending on many factors: providers, mobile telecom companies, fees/charges, mobile devices and their ability to support (or not) wifi, availability of free wifi hot spots, social networked compatibility among users, the type/model of mobile phones (see the list of supported phones), etc.

In this test video you’ll notice that during the time I was showing to Gauri Qik, streaming online my first Qik video, and notifying my followers on Twitter,  there were also parallel broadcast of the conference happening somewhere in the world. Beside alerting your friends on Twitter and on the other social networks, there are options for live chat, comments, and geo-mapping. More thoughts about mobile social technologies to come.

Qik test

I got in the previous weeks the feedback by known or unknown Twitterers who are “Follow Friday”-ing me by displaying,  recommending to the others my Twitter ID for various reasons, mostly because they think people they recommend are cool or worthwhile following. Since this communication practice repeated last Friday,  I’ve asked Twitterers what is follow Friday and who actually came up with this idea and why?
In the last few days I’ve read two good blog posts: danah boyd’s view on the communication phenomena of retweeting and Jonathan Zittrain’s thoughts on technical 140 characters barriers on Twitter. Having in mind  that retweeting process is one of the conversation practices on Twitter,  the same can be denoted to the Follow Friday movement as one of the communication behavioristic conventions.

How Follow Friday works? Basically,  Follow Friday helps people recommend other Twitter folks. As a way of recommending people you follow to other users on Twitter, Follow Friday  is presented with hashtag #followfriday or #ff. The purpose is that those who are being recommended would (potentially) gain new followers. After suggesting the name of the twitterer,  the practice is to write why you are recommending them as suggested people to follow. Some twitterers follow this practice, but many people don’t as they just write Twitter user names without stating the reason(s) why one should follow those people. Otherwise, the conversation moves into typical micro memes. Here is an example of the correct usage of FF:
@danbri  because he is the semantic web expert and co-founder of FOAF #followfriday.

The twitterer who came up with the idea of  ‘”Follow Friday” movement said that #ff has lost a lot of its original charm because too many people are making wild recommendations without any justification, in order to collect and get more random followers. I was also asking why Friday? No one so far explained this, either because is TGIF expression that many users say on Twitter every Friday, as it is more relaxed day for casual gaining new followers or because the idea that the creator of this movement likes the music of The Cure (read: Friday, I’m in love! aka I am sharing love for these followers).
This week I had a chance to talk with, above mentioned Twitterer,  Dan Brinkey on work matters, and later I was contemplating the idea of Follow Friday concept as micro communication FOAF (Friend of a friend) convention, and came to conclusion that beside recommendation and connecting people aspect, Follow Friday has communication facet of “describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do” . Twitter user ID’s are describing people, person who recommends the friend is the link, and description line “why I recommend this person to be followed” presents things they create or do. This way FF allows people and groups of people to describe social network relations without the need for a centralization.

Beside suggesting other people to follow and explaining why those people are useful to follow, there is another phenomena that I’ve noticed last Friday: massive retweeting of Follow Fridays of other people tweets. I was in wonder why would people retweet them and came to the thoughts of meta –meme Twitter user’s tagging  and collecting potential followers. This would be an example when sharing (info, contacts) is not caring but rather micro trading (silent request for an expected requirement of following back). What follows next  is an interesting to investigate as  communicative (non) behaviour amongst Twitterers that is in permanent flux.

Recently I was asked by a colleague who is working on the launching of the new information management, knowledge management (KM) system about evaluating social networking tools (read: social software, web 2.0 tools) as potential implementation in the “old” web 1.0 models for web repositories (during past times we had locked archives, not open systems). Which made me think and evaluate that special project we are about to launch (note: since I’m not bringing out insider’s information on my personal blog, but on local work intranet blog, information stated here are my personal reflections on certain issue in general).

Having in mind that the open access databases, archives, repositories are hopefully present in technology, education, science, and that the iron metal systems are behind us (hopefully), let’s say that the technology, science, academia are striving to be open. A friend of mine in our talk this evening mentioned to me good news that his teacher, professor at University is referring kids to use Wikipedia. He also says that he can find, as being soon graduate Computer Science student, very useful tips and data on programming or scrips, coding right in Wikipedia.

The full text documents systems or reference ones beside the interactivity and collaboration (in the case of Wikipedia), and others academic document repository systems at institutional level for capturing and disseminating information- need what we call social software and the usage of social networking tools for sharing. Moving from static locked systems, new ones are a dynamic web-based applications that use an advanced open source software technology for facilitating interoperability and promoting coherence in knowledge management and information exchange (hello web 2.0, and web 3.0!). Such dynamic systems require sharing tools for exchanging data, browsing data, and merging records, collaboration (from Aim, bebo, Linkedin, Digg, Facebook to Twitter, Friendfeed, Netvibes, etc.). For example: something in the form of the widget like you see the one below this post (Share this! or Add this!) for the sake of social bookmarking and exchange data amongst IT professionals, academics, social networkers, researchers, everyday Web users.

And today another colleague asked me to talk about Twitter’s purpose and usability in such systems. I will just mention one thing here as it requires deeper analysis: Twitter is useful not only for dissemination of information or sharing any information, but also as interactive collaborative playground where everybody is there (Here comes everybody!) and especially after 3 years of being present not only as as micro-blogging tool but as well as a space for networked publics that looks like (and is) micro-global village with individuals role in it. So why Twitter? Simply, because everyone is there. Your allies. Some people more or less on Facebook or My Space or Linkedin, but Twitters’ infrastructure’s been spread in all human activities. Including science. Technology. Academic world. Celeb-circustry. You name it.

I’m looking forward to see how open access systems will and are responding to current changes in Social web fluctuations, but as far as we know it using social bookmarking, sharing, social software tools in general didn’t hurt any sci-tech system. It can make it only to be more open and dynamic.

Literally. A week or something ago I took mini vacation on the south of Italy where I’ve spent recuperating time enjoying spring/summer sun, Mediterranean sea, beautiful air and sunsets, and couldn’t help but to create a tweet in the sand. The place where analogue and digital meets:

More on my Flickr. Still contemplating idea for photo-log book for my 365 days project. Any ideas?