Stephen Blyth's Blog

I’ve struggled with my study this week. After the fortnightly, online #Fo09 meeting I understand why. Blogging networks form spontaneously over time between loosely associated fellow travellers. They’re not necessarily the formal networks I’ve found so easily. My research took me to formal networks where people are blogging on a single platform. Somebody comes up [...]

The idea I had of listing community gardens around the country wasn’t a novel one (see the nascent plotting community gardens wiki I started). At almost exactly the same time I started out, the folk at Good magazine created a Google map listing all the community gardens they could find. Spooky. I haven’t found the [...]

Over a year down the track it’s good to news to hear the TechSoup New Zealand programme racking up a substantial number of software donations. At a function at Te Papa last night jointly hosted by TechSoup New Zealand’s local partner, NZFVWO, Barnardos and Microsoft, there was a fair bit of hoopla about the volume [...]

After talking to both Ian Runeckles and Gavin Clabaugh, members of the NTEN-Discuss online group, I really started thinking about the importance of ‘context’ to an online community. Rather than concentrate on the current incarnation of the group, both Ian and Gavin talked about where it all started. The current group has it’s origins in [...]

The rush to set up spaces on social networks to raise funds and engage with people is not necessarily a sure fire bet. Even if supporters do hang on your every word through Twitter bon mots it doesn’t mean they’ll reach into their pockets. People from not-for-profit organisations I talked to for an article published [...]

I was heading to the library self issue machine with a couple of items under my arm – one book on parenting, the other a computer magazine – when I stumbled on “Managing Online Forums” by Patrick O’Keefe. There’s a whole wad of advice in the tome. O’Keefe promises to “show site owners and administrators [...]