Stephen Blyth's Blog

For webmasters and other people running NGO websites in Wellington there is an abundance of ways to learn about the craft. As well as fairly regular NGO focused workshops, conferences and networking sessions, there is a whole raft of opportunities for professional website designers, content producers and others. This is of course fabulous for organisations [...]

I invariably try to frame whatever I’m writing or talking about in a resolutely positive way. Turn the statements around. Glass half full. And all that. As I feel strongly about this topic, I’m going to stick to a negative assertion that struck me as I was thinking about this blog post. If there is [...]

Yesterday I was sitting in the Ridgeway School staff room scanning summaries of blog posts and other excreta shared by participants in the #change11 Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). While my daughter was on a school visit I was giving the daily outpourings from MOOC participants a quick scan. I was doing this on my [...]

For some reason I’ve been dreading the next couple of weeks on the FO09 course. After the safeground of looking for community in forums, wikis and blogs we’re moving into the virtual world. It’s off to Second Life we go. The fact that I know I’ll be in good company as demonstrated by the presence [...]

I’m up to my eyeballs investigating options for running a live, online launch. It’s interesting that once you take the wrapping off the box of some of the web conference products you quickly find out just what the strengths and limitations are. The marketing hype promises seamless use of video and application sharing. But during [...]

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 [...]