weconverse

[Update after the gig] Whow - what an audience you are! Look at all the pictures in the photostream and all the things hashtagged as #SPECIE2010. Thanks for all the comments and special thanks to all of you that decided to follow @RichardGatarski on Twitter. I have uploaded my handout as 6 slides/page (pdf 6.7 Mb) and as a show on Slideshare (notice how related presos are automatically found there). Regarding “what’s the next thing”, stay tuned for Graeme Codrington’s key note. Later on I’ll publish a special post on Augmented Reality. A few links to stuff I talked about: Trojangames.co.uk (condom brand building pre YouTube); Judith Wolst on Passion; Robin Teiglands slides on Leveraging Networks and Social Media; Melody’s video Breakup; and - if you are interested in research on how young people think about the Internet, check out Elza Dunkel’s dissertation and Danah Boud’s wonderful work. Remember, mind is more important than technology. Be Safe, which is more than Secure ;)

[Update 2010-02-03: I am preparing my preso. Now setup so that when you E-mail photos to species@gatarski.com, they will show up in the weconverse Flickr photostream tagged as SPECIES-2010.]

F-Secure is “the global leader in providing security as a service through operators”. SPECIES is their “worldwide ecosystem conference for F-Secure Operator Partners. Its objective is to increase the exchange of best practices among participating companies and to enable a dynamic environment for networking”.

SPECIES 2010 (link for SPA-members) takes place two days in Vienna and will be opened by Pär Andler (Head of Operator Marketing, F-Secure) and Kimmo Alkio (CEO and President, F-Secure Corporation). Following them, I will make a key note presentation on Passion around the question:

How you can get excited about things you have always worked with /about things you don’t have a clue what they are / about things you know are the right ones (even if others don’t) , and keep that enthusiasm despite the obstacles you may face?

Whow, that is a good question! Tho two other key notes will be delivered by Dr. Graeme Codrington (TomorrowToday) and Timo Vuorensola (AD, Director, Energiaproductions, Wreckamovie). I highly recommend checking them out! (The event is by invitation only, but you can google or follow their links, in particular to Codrington’s After Shock and Vuoransola’s Wreckamovie.

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If you make stage presentations, you will sooner or later find yourself in a situation when your talk is streamed live or recorded on video. Here are some tips on how you can (re)design your slides and your act to support an excellent performance for people not physically present.

Web video is increasingly important

Nobody could have missed the fact that web video has become immensively popular. This includes the cases when various meetings (e.g. conferences and seminars) are live streamed on the Web, and sometimes made available for later viewing.

During 2009 I have been engaged in the production of a number of such live streamed events. These have ranged from simple setups with just a smartphone as the camera, to more complex settings involving the live mixing of multiple cameras with graphics and simultaneous broadcasts of multiple channels from the same event. I have briefly documented an example of the latter at Production setup event for 2009-11-27.

Of the many lessons we have learned so far, I would like to share some insights regarding presenters and their visual support, be it slides from Microsoft Powerpoint, Apple Keynote, Prezi or any other presentation tool.

Please note that the ideas presented here are based on my personal experiences and preferences. I am not making any claims that the advice given is supported by any kind of scientific or formal practical research.

The three main sources of preso content

There are basically three main media sources in a live presentation: the sound, the speaker, and the slides. Let us start by looking into what goes from stage to web/video space.

1. Sound is extremely important.
   Make sure people can hear you, This includes audio in the form of your voice as well as any other sound coming from the stage and the room. If the audience gives you questions and a warm applause, will they appear in the video? Hence, a good mike on you (lavalier or headset), audience mikes, and audio mixers are in practice a necessity. As a safe guard, always repeat what the audience say (although it is perphaps overkill to appluse yourself ;)
   Quite frequently the “video audience” will use only the sound. For example, when listening as a background while doing other things on their PC, or just listening to your talk in an mp3 player.
   If the sound quality is bad, people will most likely give up. Imperfect slides might on the other hand just be overlooked.
2. The presenter is of course equally important.
   Giving a presentation is a performance act. The video producer should strive to provide a good image of the speaker’s face and body. Whereas facial close-ups support the connection with viewers, one must not forget the importance of body language. Facilitating both is a daunting task for the producer, especially when the speaker move around the stage, sometimes even running back and forth. You have a choice, be energetic (and stress the producer); be static (and bore the auditorium); or be dynamic by balancing both forms of kinetic approaches in a smart fashion.
3. Slides vary between useless and crucial.
   I will not go into detail here about what one should do in order to produce good slides. Suffice to say is that your slides should be useful, otherwise skip them. To learn more, I suggest you dig into Garr Reynold’s fantastic Presentation Zen. In that blog Mr Reynold by the way provides excellent insights about talks way beyond the slides part.

Slide synchronization versus integration

Okay, let us now focus on you as a speaker and your slides. When it comes to people in the room, it’s up to them whether to look at you or the images you show. Hopefully the slides by themselves are always made available before or after the presentation. Either published as pdf-files, or on services like Slideshare.

When the meeting is watched through a live stream and/or recorded on video, the situation is different. In that case the producer must decide on what to include, and how.

For some years we have had the option to afterwards publish a web page where the video recording of the stage appearance is synchronized with the slides. There are an abundance of services and post production tools for that. For example, Omnisio (now aquired by Google) offers such tools. As illustrated in the screen shot below (from Startup School 08), viewers can see the slides (left), the speaker (right), and navigate (bottom part).

Another way is to integrate, or mix, the speaker with the slides. That is, include the speaker and the slides in one single video stream/recording.

One way of integrating is to show either the speaker/stage or the slide being talked about. Another way is to mix in the speaker into the slide, as illustrated here from an archived live streamed  recording we did for SSR Konsument.

Which method, synchronization or integration, is better should of course be determined by the situation. In general, I am betting on integration.

Future will tell, but for the moment my impression is that we are slowly leaving the desktop/laptop environment for viewing situations that are mobile. In other words viewers might not be able to run the software applications necessary to watch synchronized presentations.

Furthermore, synchronized presentations require some, sometimes a lot, of post production. That is a time consuming and costly process. Hence, in many cases it is simply more cost effective to produce a single live mixed recording.

So, whenever you as a presenter suspect that your presentation will be recorded with your slides integrated, I suggest you prepare your slides for that.

Design your slides for video

Given the above, here are some tips on how you can design your slides for a nice result when the talk ends up in a video format.

• Think low res.
  While everyone seems to be crazy about full HD, mobile devices have relatively low resolution. In 320×240 (limitation in many mobile phones) most slides are still usable, but copy text might become unreadable,. Smart phones, like the iPhone and various flavors of the Android and Windows mobile, are slightly better and typically offers 320×480 (or 480×320 in landscape mode). Therefore, if your slides feature important text information (e.g. an e-mail or web address), make sure it’s readable in low resolution.
• Leave room for video integration.
  It might very well be that the producer will integrate the stage camera into your slide(s). In particular when you talk about the slide(s) for a longer time, or when the emphasis is more on your visuals than yourself. Trust me, the producer will love you if you leave som empty space in your slide where that video nicely can be integrated without destroying the slide.
• Consider the DOG
  The broadcasting term DOG (Digital On-screen Graphic, or “corner bug”) refers to the watermark station logo, typically imposed in the upper right corner of the screen. This graphic might be inserted by the producer when the recording is made, or later by the video sharing service. Sometimes the DOG appears throughout the whole video, at other times  just for a short while when the video starts playing. Again, consider leaving some room for the DOG in your slide.
• Beware of lower thirds.
  The lower third is “a graphic placed in the lower area of the screen, though not necessarily the entire lower third of it as the name suggests”. This part of the screen is frequently used to present subtitles and captions (such as the name of the speaker). In addition, many web sharing services (like YouTube) use this area to superimpose advertising content on top of the video. Hence, if you have important information in that part of the slide, it might occasionally be hidden by other stuff.

Interact with the video production

If you are a well trained speaker you understand the importance of having a good contact with the audience. Live streaming and video recording adds the dimensions of a non visible audience and the appearance of cameras.

• Smile to the camera.
  Make sure you know where the camera is, and direct your attention towards it when useful. Remember, people are watching you through the camera, give video viewers too a smile.
• Point in the proper direction.
  There are situations when speakers direct the attention to a slide by pointing to it with their arm/hand. In such cases, it is important to consider where you might appear in the video. If you have left some space for video integration in one side of your slides, then make sure you are standing on the same side of your slide. Otherwise your hand will point out from the slide, not into it.
• Be careful when fronting your slides.
  Sometimes it is possible for you to walk up to the screen and point in it, on the slight expense of obscuring the image. While this occasionally looks OK on stage, it might not look so good in the video. Depending on the quality of the camera and its operator, it is everything from impossible to difficult to get a good contrast. Either you are just in the way, or you are the only visible object. Contrast is king -  and difficult on video.
• Help the producer.
  Depending on the setting, you might be able to have a subtle interaction with the streaming/recording producer. Try to keep an eye on him or her. Maybe you can on beforehand agree on signs when you should start, thus giving room for a vignette or simply make sure that everything is good to go. At other times the producer might want to call to your attention that your mike needs to be repositioned.

Let us learn more

I hope my concerns and advice regarding how to prepare a presentation for live streaming and webb video are useful. Please let us know by commenting here if you have things to add or if the above raised any questions that needs further attention.

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Via @Stefan_Palsson I just learned about an “informal seminar for Directors General for Schools in the EU Member States”. Take a look at the image that represents the meeting’s view of Schools:

Photo: Tomislav Stjepić

The aim of this 2 day meeting is described as follows:

“The purpose is to achieve a dialogue about current school issues between the Member States. The goal is to support school development through exchange of knowledge and good practice in the field of school education”.

I say, good luck! Participation and access is by invitation only. That’s another illustration of their view on how things are to be managed. Directors-General,  lock yourself up and figure out the future…

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For me one of the most important cultural settings with Twitter is the personal focus. I am Richard Gatarski the person. Therefore I changed, after long consideration, from @weconverse to @RichardGatarski.

If you are interested in the technicalities around the switch you may skip the first part and scroll down to “Changing the twitter user name is easy”.

About my real name

My father Kazimierz Gatarski was born in Poland. In his teen years he moved to England. In 1945 dad sat with his new friend Richard W and shared thoughts about their future. Richard W said that if he ever got a son he would name him Kazimierz. My father immediately returned the favor by saying he would be proud to name his first son Richard, in case he got one. Tragically Richard W died in combat in 1949.

Nine years later I was born. Mother and father discussed names. And as promised 13 years earlier I was given the name Richard. A name that I am proud of. In particular when I consider the reason why. I am also fortunate to have a rather uniqe name in the english/swedish speaking part of the world. Hence it is easy to find me. Of course, it is also important for me to remember that as I go around doing things.

Multiple identities

Those of you that know me might remember that many years ago I started to experiment with different identities - on the Internet. Sometimes in order to play trick with services so that they could not connect me as a customer with me as a person. At other times to separate my person from my ventures (e.g. corporations). Weconverse.com is an attempt to manage that of me which concern my gigs and media development. Skolmarknad.info is another one to manage my interest and doings when schools meet the marketing system. (And I have stakes in more than those ;).

When I registered with Twitter for the first time (March 2007) I decided to go for @weconverse, since my idea was to use that identity for experiments in media development/change. Since then I have figured out two things.

1. Even though my tweets are focused on my professional side (with some personal spice, never private), I find it hard to limit myself to media matters. In particular, this is a problem as I balance more and more towards how we take care of your children (including their schools).
2. At many occasions I have met other people who know about weconverse, but not me (Richard Gatarski). Last time this happened was yesterday at The Really Realtime Conference. Too sad, since I am after all a free lance consultant and find it valuable that you know about me (too).

Weconverse will remain in a limited fashion with it’s established focus. RichardGatarski will emerge more (RichardGatarski.com is under way, more on that laer).

Long name and time

As @sliceonline pointed out today, I have been talking about changing my twitter user name for several months. Two weeks ago, in another blog post (in Swedish), I asked for advice whether to go for rgatarski or richardgatarski (gatarski is taken). Before I published the post I registered the twitter user names “rgatarski” and “richardgatarski”. The majority of commenters adviced me to use the shorter version. Mainly because it takes less space - characters are limited in micro blogs.

To make a long and mindful story short, I decided that I wanted to be myself as much as possible on twitter. Rgatarski is not really me, it’s another identity. And as I have explained “richard” is important - for us I hope. So sorry, from now on we have to be even shorter when I am involved in micro blog posts.

Quite a few other twitterers use a combination of their first and last name. Fewer, it seems to me, end up in using all 15 characters available for a user name.

You are important

Enough about me. I very much care about every other physical person who follow me and/or send me messages. Another big obstacle in this process has been my ignorance about how to change a twitter user name. And what happens when one does change. Now I know more, and want to share what I have learned with the help of others.

Changing twitter user name is easy

In Twitter’s settings panel there is an option to change user name. If you do, the old name is immediately available for anyone to take. Around a month or so ago Kristofer Björkman, a (business) friend of mine, changed from @MyNewsdesk to @ddesk. The former was to become the official twitterchannel for Mynewsdesk.com, the company Kristofer works for. Appareantly he was able to keep his followers. Relief!

Then I googled around a little and found out how to do it. So this morning I:

1. logged in to RichardGatarski and temporarily changed that user name to richardxyz
2. logged in to weconverse and changed username toRrichardGatarski
3. logged in to richardxyz and changed it to weconverse, posted a note about my change, and filled in a profile that hopefylly informs where to find me
4. logged in to RichardGatarski and tweeted about the change “Dear former followers of @weconverse, you are now following @RichardGatarski (and @-send me there)”

The I begun a complicted process in attempt to keep my social things hanging together.

Replies and new followers are harder

There are a lot of “@weconverse” out there. Anyone who send a message to @weconverse will send it there, not to @RichardGatarski. That means I have to monitor that account and take proper action whenever new messages arrive. I know of no automated services that manage this problem. So, for a while I have to keep en eye there.

Sometimes a twitter savvy person recommend who to follow (e.g. FF-ing). In case anyone from now on recommend @weconverse, that means they will not follow @RichardGatarski. Perhaps potential new followers will check out @weconverse and through its bio decide to go for the “right” user name.  In the case anyone starts following @weconverse, they will get an automated Direct Message to follow @RichardGatarski instead. This is taken care of by the autorespond service in SocialOomph.

The (free) service from SocialOomph will also e-mail me a digestion of messages directed to @weconverse. Interestingly enough the first compilation just delivered contains a lot of older replies to @weconverse. But as said above, I still have to act on that manually.

The social network is a mess

Last night Jyri Engeström ended the Really Real time conference with a high level talk (video at Blip.tv) on identity management and social content. Jyri pointed to many important issues and suggested some useful directions. Still, there is a really delicate and technically complex set of problems unfolding.

I use the Twitter Facebook app to republish my tweets to Facebook.com/RichardGatarski. I have weconverse accounts at Posterous, Bloggy and Jaiku. For the moment I will let them be as they are, but changed at Identi.ca (there are limits to what I manage, and have other things to do). I normally use Ping.fm to publish micro blogs posts to Twitter, Bloggy, Jaiku and Identi.ca. My FriendFeed account weconverse has been renamed to Friendfeed.com/RichardGatarski. Which still imports stuff from some of my other social accounts. At weconvers.com a widget imports the FriendFeed stuff. I have/had to set up Bambuser, Ustream and some other services to autotweet @RichardGatarski instead of @weconverse. By the way, most of my streaming accounts will until further notice remain “weconverse”. So will the weconverse identities on YouTube, Flickr, you name it…

Do you see how complex my small social network activity is? I am not even sure what works right now. I guess it will take a while until the most important interchanges works.

Conclusion

Changing ones user name on Twitter is easy. But that user’s (identity) and it’s interrelations with a wider range of social networking services quickly become rather complex.

The case described here is about my humble person (and personal brand). Now you may imagine what happens when the issue concerns larger corporations/organizations and all their brands.

There is only one way to go.

Forward.

Welcome to @RichardGatarski and all your comments :-D

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Two days ago I visited an interesting breakfast seminar (see post in Swedish). It was an event prganized by Springtime, where Emanuel Rosen stopped by on his book tour The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited.

Unboxing, by The Register described as “The new geek porn“, is the thing where people document their first encounter with cool new stuff recieved (in a box). Typically the whole experience from opening up the package to trying out the gadget/object in real life is documented on video and published live, or uploaded soon afterwards.

Unboxing content works as customer generated marketing. It informs as well as entertains. In some sense, it is/generate buzz. Speaking about the latter. For me it was natural to share with you a video where I unboxed a little, higly relevant, item a few minutes ago. Enjoy below above, on Vimeo, or on YouTube.

If you want to see other unboxings, just search for “[product] unboxing” (replace [product] with something you are interested in). As an example, I searched for “unboxing hero android” and found Hero in the house!

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Today I had a really interesting lunch conversation with Hanna Stjärne, who is with Sveriges Radio (SR, Swedish Public radio) and currently investigates their future (press information in Swedish).

Hanna Stjärne has been with SR for many years, working as head of P1 (talk radio, oriented towards societal issues and public affairs), Program director, Manager of domestic news for “Ekot”, Foreign correspondent, and more (my interpretations of her assignments).

She called me about this lunch last Friday, and initially asked me for “three broad trends underlying media development” (if I understood her right ;) Without too much consideration I suggested:

1. A post textual revolution (everyone can produce, distribute, and share multi modal content).
2. Open Crowdsourcing (everyone create openly and in collaboration)
3. Institutional reformations (our old insitutions must be re-considered and we should form new institutions fit for the future, not the past).

Least to say I view the first two as more or less commonly understood, and the third being increasingly recognized. Those of you who know me might guess that I personally focus the insitition “School”.

As a background I shared some of my thougts in a presentation for a group of SR people (including Hanna) back in 2004 (slides as pdf). In my view what I said then still holds, but more. Before, and since, I have at times attempted a kind of Don Quijotesce fight to debate “Public Service”. An institution that in my view needs elaborate reconsideration too.

Anyway, we talked about big and small issues, with an emphasis on the former in, a kind of philosophical fashion. Matters we discussed included emotions versus rational thinking, acgricultural and industrial revolutions, the roles of money and commercialism, enterprises encompassing the whole value chaing versus free lance work forces, power, nations and alternative “we’s” (compare Paul Romer and charter cities).

I adviced her to report in a multi modal (audio and more) form, thus not only deliver a traditional written report. Hanna made some notes on paper, I did this post ;) Another idea I suggested was to map the social graph outlining “thinkers” like me. (See Robin Teigland explain why and how). And of course said that everything a public service organization produce should be open source, e.g. using a Creative Commons license.

Afterwards Hanna Stjärne asked me for names of other interesting people she should talk to. I promised to come back on that one. But a few persons that immediately sprung to mind were:

• Kristinia Höök (affective computing, perhaps also Rosalind W. Picard)
• Alexander Bard (heavy stuff)
• Stefan Pålsson (a really good overview of IT developments in schools)
• Don Tapscott (insitutional reforms, help him title his next book)

Who else do we know (about)?

Also, I am curious what Hanna (and you) think about the format of WNYC Radiolab, in my view a really inspiring series of (pod)radio shows about science.

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Recently I noticed that there was something called #grid09. Don´t know what it was, but the event seems to attract attention and interest (including from me). Half an hour ago @eovemar tweeted that the videos from GRID09 were available. Ten minutes earlier, in another context,  @wacka wrote:

“Media sites = quick updates for me. But the latest stuff is increasingly(?) TV/video only. I don’t have the time! I want to read!”

My immediate thought was to give Fredrik Wackå a response and say something like the following:

Listening more than reading

I want to read too, not books or other stuff, but letters off the Web. More importantly, I take in a lot of audio. Mainly from podcasts and audio books. But also by listening to the audio streams from videos,where the image part, quite frequently, does not add much value.

When videos are valuable

The problems, or perhaps rather the valuable situations, are when the videos are indeed useful to see. It may be because of the presenter’s slides, rethorics or something you name it. Furthermore, I simply do not want to sit down at the laptop and watch video. My main solution is to watch videos in my mobile.

Watching video mobile

These days I watch more and more videos on my HTC Magic (before it on my iPhone). Mostly in the subway or in bed. Either online streamed (from YouTube and TED) or video files transfered into my mobile. The latter is rather cumbersome to set up, because most video streaming services/publihers do not allow or support downloading. A challenge that I sometimes can solve by using various ripping software.

But not from GRID09

Back to GRID09 and their “Videos on demand” (bonnier.com/en/gridmeeting). I went there, to a site that looks nice and clean. The videos are there, the speakers and the subjects look very interesting. But, I won’t see the GRID09 videos, because I cannot download them. The streaming platform they use (TV4 Play, a service from Bonnier) have disabled downloading (via my main ripper Real Player Plus). GRID09 does not even support any “share functionality”. That is, functions that help us tell our friends through various social networking services.

Too bad.

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This morning I learned from a tweet via @bjornfalkevik that Moto Boy would perform in Stockholm City in less than two hours. Since Moto Boy (Oskar Humlebo) is one of my favorite artists I changed my plans for the day, and decided to join the gig. Judging from what I later saw I got the impression that the event was both a tribute to Peter Gabriel (who passed by on his way to pick up the Polar Music Prize) and some SMR (social media relations) acts for Moto Boy himself - a stunt that I gladly support.

With no time to prep for a better streaming setup I just went off with my HTC Magic, the Bambuser app för Android and good faith. Not sure that I had auto-tweet on at my account I asked @bjornjeffery to tweet that I streamed, and appearantly the characters where spread.

After I hit the “broadcast” button on my mobile I realized that most likely the sound was picked up by my Bluetooth headset. As you can se a couple of minutes into the first archived live stream (see below) I therefore put my headset close to Moto Boy’s PA-speaker. But a few minutes later someone chatted that he could not hear any sound. So I stopped the broadcast, turned off Bluetooth, and broadcasted again.

There seems to be a general issue with sound from the live player at Bambuser.com. Quite frequently people, including myself, who watch my stuff complain about lost sound. The simple fix is to reload the page in your browser. Unfortunately I could not chat that during the cast. As far as I know I can only see the chat in my mobile while streaming - not participate. In any case, this was great fun and gave us some valuable insights, besides a great performance.

All archived streams are available at bambuser.com/channel/weconverse as the first, second and third video (Earlier this year I did a Qik one at Media Evolution in Malmö). Oskar Humblebo’s handshake with Peter Gabriel is about one minute into the third video, embedded here. And tonite at 16.30 TV4 will broadcast the prize ceremony, where Moto Boy and others will perform. Enjoy!

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June 6 this year I, or rather we, delivered a talk at the inaugural TEDx Stockholm event 2. I was invited to spend five minutes on a TED-ish subject, and I asked everyone for help (see the gig post). The result was a crowd sourced presentation that hit YouTube yesterday at the official www.youtube.com/user/TEDxTalks channel.

Actually, all seven presentations have been available at tedxstockholm.blip.tv for about a week. But I waited to publish my talk here until the YouTube version was up. Simply because the iPhone, Android and some other mobile platforms have native support for YouTube videos. Most other video sharing services, including Blip.tv, publish in Flash, a format that many mobile phones does not support.

Take a look, comment and share if you feel for it. And don’t forget to watch the other talks at TEDxStockholm, they are really good. Next TEDx Stockholm event is scheduled for September 19, 2009.

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A year ago my academic web site disappeared. And those who made it go away probably ignored that such a thing could happen. This is an anecdotical and introspective tale about why you should (perhaps) not trust your (web) content to a university. Or any kind of institution for that matter. Because if you do, your stuff may just disappear. And there is nothing you can do about it.

Science used to mean paper

In the old days (academic) knowledge was captured and disseminated through paper, dominantly in the forms of journal articles and scientific books. Typically they were printed and distributed by independent commercial publishers. An important task of university libraries have been to gather such works and make them available to researchers and students. More recently various forms of electronic media, including the Web, have supplemented this flow of academic information. For a long time one major concerns has been the longevity of e-media, compared to books. But maybe we face other challenges within a much shorter time frame.

Social media in a scientific context

With the advent of Internet, the Web, and now “social media” anyone may publish their thoughts, notes, reflections, conversations, interactions, and behavioral patterns. Including of course academic work. We may do it through social media services, at our own/hosted web servers, etc. Numerous are the blogs, forums, communities, research networks, etc. where scientist converse about and disseminate their work. Sometimes those media resides within the domains of universitites. Well, this subject is kind of huge so I pause here for the moment (but will end with a link to some older thoughts of mine).

One student published his work at his university

Around 15 years ago I decided to start a reseach project in Business Administration. At that time I had spent a number of years at the School of Business, Stockholm University. First as a student, later as a part time systems developer and an assistant professor in Marketing. My decision to pursue a PhD was heavily influenced and supported by professor Bo Hedberg, who also became my supervisor.

I won’t go into details about my ideas around the form of my dissertation. Suffice to say here is that I put various drafts of my research proposal on the Web. Because my department did not have a web presence at that time, I published the stuff on my (and my business partners) domain bat.se. I defended a beta version  June 7, 1995. And the proposal is still to be found at the bat site (including a now defunct version in the Replica format).

Time went on, and as soon as the School of Business provided some web space for us doctoral candidates I begun documenting my research at www.fek.su.se/home/rgi (no link, I’ll tell you why in a moment). One of the first things I put there was “Contents Management, Imaginary Organizations, and Agents as Consumers: How IT could shape the Market in 2019″. That was the manuscript for a book chapter that I wrote in 1995, together with professor Hedberg. Ironically, the orginization who ordered the chapter never published the book. Too many contributors never delivered, but we delivered immediately on the Web. I kind of felt proud when my stuff for a while generated most of the incoming traffic at www.fek.su.se.

Ten years of Web publications vanished

Last fall (2008) I found out that the School of Business had redesigned their web site. And in the process they just ignored my research. About ten years worth of virtually daily updates were gone! That included most of the manuscripts for my published work. The same thing happened to lecture notes, powerpoint slides, course documentations, useful links, etc. It had all disappeared from the Web.

As soon as I learned about this I sent an e-mail to info@fek.su.se (and as far as I can remember a similar note to Stockholm University’s communications department). I told them that I my stuff was gone, and asked if they had any comments. Appearantly not, as they never replied. I am still deleted. In fact, if you search for my name it looks like that I have never been there. Thank you School of Business :-(

In non-universities we may trust

Courtesy of the Internet Archive you can still find most of my academic stuff on the Web through their Wayback machine. For example the book chapter “Contents management…“, various archives of my academic web site, including the most recent version from January 2008 (although I stopped updating it in 2005 when I left the departement). The Internet Archive is “a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library“. Dah! What happened to the responsability of the University (Library)?

One major problem though, is that none of the links pointing to my research at www.fek.su.se/home/rgi works. For example, links to the 1997 paper “Interactive Media Face Artificial Consumers” (archived here), which currently is becoming highly contemporary (why in a later post).

The sad story does not end here. Late 2006 Stockholm University begun offering their faculty and students a blogging service at blogs.su.se. At that time I still had some minor assignments as an assistant professor. So I decided to try out their blogging platform and launched “Richard Gatarskis relationer med Stockholms Universitet” at blogs.su.se/rgi (no link, guess why). Within a short time my blog there was one of the most read ones, right behind the Vice-Chancellor’s. Then during the summer of 2008, all my records from the staff directory was removed. Fair, since I no longer worked there. But in practice that meant I could no longer manage my blog, including moderating comments. I pointed that out to the IT and the communications deptartments. Their solution was to simply remove the blog. But guess what. The Wayback machine helps us again. So we can at least read archived versions of blogs.su.se/rgi. Of course none of the existing links to my blog’s original address works.

Similar issues

A couple of years ago I made an experiment at the Department of PR and advertising at Stockholm university. Based on the PBworks platform I attempted to crowd/open-source an academic five week course about “the individuals role in social media” from scratch. The department paid for a premium wiki and I launched giicod.pbworks.com (Swedish) in August 2007. It was developed and maintained by fellow teachers, students and some other stakeholders. A year later the department said “dump it”. But I still let it live :-D

Currently, at least in the social media bubble I reside, a story about who keeps the tweeps when a journalist moves from one newspaper to another has caught a lot of attention. It illustrates the problematic social relations between an individial, her organization(s), outside networks and conversationally generated content.

[Update 2009-08-24: I forgot to include Paul Colligans post "About Podango's Demise And The Smart Podcaster's Response" which he published late December last year. Podango was a podcast distribution service that was terminated on an extremely short notice, in effect removing all episodes published by its users. Most likely that was one but the first in a line if similar cases].

Lessons learned and my advice

I no longer follow the developments regarding the scientific information processes and our current media revolution. I once did, and presented “Marketing Research in the Digital Domain: a cry from a pilrgrim in the late 20:th century“. Perhaps the issues I bring forward today are heavily discussed among university chancellors, political leaders, educational policy makers, and scientific philosophers. But I doubt that. Please enlight me.

Meanwhile, for those of you who publish stuff on the Web while working with an organisation, including universities. Try to put your content where you control it. Most likely you will move between work places, temporary assignments, and soforth. If you want your stuff to be preserved, it is your responsability to make sure it is.

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