Dresden
Finally for today I'm in a session on convergence and networking which, perhaps unsurprisingly, has a strong representation of Korean and Japanese researchers. The first paper is by Euchiul Jung and is presented in absentia - it is motivated by the increasing flow of people, culture and information beyond national boundaries, and looks at ethnicity-based public spheres at local levels. Diasporic identity is a reconstructed and transformed cultural identity - a hybrid identity.

The paper found that new media technologies were helpful in keeping the members of such communities in touch with their cultures of origin, and increased the close connection between them and their home culture. Key media here were both the Internet, which allowed more access to information and culture from the culture of origin, and the mobile phone, which allowed for more mobility and flexibility. Both increased the intra-cultural communication within the diasporic community. This also led to a growth in the cultural politics of distinction, recognition, and identification, and allowed for the emergence of mediated, ethnicity-based public spheres and communication networks. The result was a transformed, hybridised cultural identity.

I realise I haven't posted here for a while - but that doesn't mean that things haven't been busy on this site. I spent some time upgrading the site to the latest version of Drupal recently, and that's meant some fairly tricky code fixes because some of the Drupal modules I'm running here haven't been fully upgraded to version 4.7.x yet - but at least trackback.module is now out in a new version which incorporates some of my contributions. Good to contribute to an open source project for once, instead of just doing research on them... The new version of Drupal has also switched to a new templating system, so while the look of this site may not have changed much overall, I've had to do some fairly serious reworking of the code underneath. Anyway, that's the reason for the four days' gap in the site statistics which you can see on the front page (and happily the changeover over those days also wiped out four days of trackback spam...).

Well, it's always nice if things have good timing. The other day I found two letters from my publisher Peter Lang in the mail: one, from the Switzerland office, was a royalty cheque for Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production - we've sold over a quarter of the first print run already, even though reviews are only just starting to appear. I was tempted to have it framed - but then, it is an actual cheque... The other was a letter from the New York office, with the contract for the next book, which currently has the working title Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. Due in mid-2007, it continues my work on Produsers and Produsage, and provides a guide to the landscape of produsage across a wide variety of domains.

I presented a paper reviewing the first year of Wikinews at the Association of Internet Researchers conference in Chicago in 2005, and this paper has also been accepted for publication in Scan Journal in June 2006. Today I've finally posted the audio from that presentation.

I also spent part of today revising the paper with more recent figures on the development of Wikinews for publication in Scan - in the conference paper I had argued that some of the systemic problems within Wikinews had stunted its growth through the furst year, and I'm sorry to day that (but for a brief spike in the aftermath of the London bombings and hurricanes Katrina and Rita) this trend appears to have continued to date.

Last week I had the great pleasure to publish the 'collaborate' issue of M/C Journal, which I edited with my great friend and colleague Donna Lee Brien from the University of New England. I'm very happy with how it's turned out, with a very interesting mix of general theory and practitioner reports from academia, arts, and the media, and a great feature article by Suw Charman from the Open Rights Group. Here's the announcement:

A little while ago Trebor Scholz suggested that I should respond to a post of his on the Institute for Distributed Creativity mailing-list, about using wikis and blogs in teaching. I finally got around to this yesterday, and thought I might post it up here as well. This also refers back to the interview Trebor did with me last year, and to the Large Teaching & Learning Grant project which I co-direct at QUT (see Blogs and Wikis in Teaching at QUT for some more information). Any comments welcome!

(Um, that's Uses of Blogs in the news - not uses of blogs in newsmaking...)

Heh. Uses of Blogs is already making headlines. Good timing, too - we've just heard from the publisher that the book should be hitting stores in about two months... Alternatively, of course, you could already pre-order it from Amazon.com.

As I've mentioned previously, today I took part in an online event to mark World Intellectual Property Day, held within the Second Life space. Very interesting event, with only a small number of technical issues. I did make a recording of it, but I think there was also an official recording which I imagine will be available in due course... Anyway, here's (roughly) what I said:

I'm very happy to report that Uses of Blogs, which Joanne Jacobs and I have edited for Peter Lang, is about to go to the printers. One of the last things we've signed off on now is the book cover, based on an idea by Jo and me and produced with the assistance of ACID's Gavin Winter, who took the photo of the Rode microphone - here's a preview. There's probably no need to explain this, but of course the advancing phalanx of microphones in the image is symbolic for the multiplication and amplification of voices in and through the blogosphere - every blogger has their own soapbox, talk-back show, stage, or public lecture event now.

Next Wednesday is World Intellectual Property Day - and I'm going to be part of an event which takes place within the virtual world of Second Life. This is my first venture into Second Life, and it should be an exciting event. We'll be meeting at Pooley Stage, Pooley (251, 16, 55), at 2 p.m. Australian Eastern Standard Time on Wednesday 26 April (which equates to 9 p.m. Server Time on Tuesday 25 April).

21st Century Creativity in a Copyright World: How Can the Potential Be Realised?

You are invited to join the QUT Law Faculty's Intellectual Property: Knowledge, Culture, and Economy Program, in conjunction with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, for a free seminar on World Intellectual Property day at 2pm on Wednesday 26 April 2006. The rapid pace of technological change that we are experiencing requires us to always be aware of the balances inherent in copyright law; we must attempt to provide adequate protection to copyright owners, while at the same time allow for a rich culture of experimentation and innovation. Particularly, we must be careful not to close off new avenues for expression and creativity before they have a chance to develop. Join us for a discussion of the current context, covering fair use/fair dealing, blogs, mash-ups, parody, and much more.