This made it into my inbox today. With Sal Humphreys, I have a paper in this - but unfortunately we're both unable to make it. Wish I could be there...

Call for Participation

2005 INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON WIKIS (WikiSym 2005)

Oct 16-18, San Diego, California, U.S.A.

WikiSym 2005 features keynotes by

• Ward Cunningham (inventor of the wiki)
• Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia), and
• Robert Hass (former U.S. poet laureate).

The program offers a research paper track providing the best in current wiki research, as well as workshops, tutorials, demos, and social events. Everyone who is involved in using, researching, or developing wikis is invited to participate!

My colleagues at the Smart Internet CRC at Swinburne University have just released a major report forecasting Internet developments over the next half decade or so - not an easy task, as in Internet years even 2010 still seems an eternity from now. Looks very interesting - and I'm especially intrigued by the four 'Schools of Thought' for what the Net will be which they've identified in their research:

1. Adaptive User Environment
   (the Net of 2010 will be highly adaptive to human needs)
2. Not The Smart Internet
   (functional and low-cost solutions will lead the way)
3. Rich Media
   (rich, mobile media and media platforms will be the key drivers)
4. Chaos Rules
   (a continual state of decay and worsening disorder)

But of course this brief outline doesn't do the whole 170-page report justice. I look forward to reading the whole thing - and so can you (PDFs):

I didn't yet get around to mentioning that I spent the last weekend in Darwin, visiting my old friend Ron who currently works up there. Just a quick weekend trip (on Frequent Flier points accumulated through conference travel last year), flying out Friday after work and returning Monday morning directly back to work - and I think I'm still backing up for the sleep I lost in transit. It was great to get out of the Brisbane cold for a while and warm up in very balmy conditions - and interesting to see Darwin for the first time, with Ron a a tour guide.

What struck me was how much more, well, Australian Darwin seemed - perhaps that's just the wide open streets, or the greater amount of red dust everywhere, or the ant hills on the outskirts of town, but I really felt more like being in Australia again than I do during my everyday life here in Brisbane. In fact, Darwin now reminded me of how Brisbane felt when I first came here on holidays in 1990 - so perhaps it's the familiarity of having lived in Brisbane for 11 years now or the fast that this city has gone through some massive changes since then and become more cosmopolitan (and crowded): more of a metropolis in its own right, and less part of a national image.

I'm now starting work on my Wikinews article, for the Association of Internet Researchers conference in Chicago in October, and possible later publication in the 'News and the Net: Convergences and Divergences' issue of the journal Scan, edited by Chris Atton and Graham Meikle. I've sent a questionnaire about the Wikinews experience to my contact there, but if any other Wikinewsians happen to read this, your views would also be very much appreciated. Reply through comments, or email me.

Hmm, what is it with blogging academics at the moment? Most of the people on my blogroll (such as it is) seem to be in a go-slow period with their blogging at right now - Jean had to reassure us she's still there; Jill signed off for the northern summer once or twice; Jo's blogging has been intermittent for a while as well. For me, if I don't get a good holiday early on, by the time my birthday comes around in August I'm just about out of steam for the year, and so the blog has suffered as well.

I published the latest issue of M/C Journal the other day - congratulations to the issue editors, Josh Green and Adam Swift:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 25 August 2005

M/C - Media and Culture
is proud to present issue four in volume eight of

M/C Journal
http://journal.media-culture.org.au/

'scan' - Edited by Joshua Green & Adam Swift

A few unexpected twists and turns to the day today... Looks like my server IP address changed during the night and that change wasn't detected and reported to the DNS service - sorry if the site seemed down and email didn't work for a while. It should be fixed now (spam's coming in again, yay), and while looking for the cause of the problem I also noticed some very interesting stats over at ZoneEdit, who are my DNS host: turns out that DNS lookups of the media-culture.org.au domains for M/C - Media and Culture have grown almost exponentially over the last years!

Suw Charman points to a new report on the growth and patterns of readership in the blogosphere - some interesting stats, even if they're fairly US-centric. I'm slightly miffed that reports such as this still tend to throw open news sites like Slashdot into the mix as if they were blogs (which clearly they're not), but then again Slashdot now offers individual user blogs in addition to its collaborative open news content, so perhaps that's why it's included here.

My host at the Institute for Distributed Creativity in New York, Trebor Scholz, prompted me again for someone to dedicate my public lectures in September and October to. Perhaps happily, my search for bloggers or other citizen journalists who were killed in action (see I Seek Dead People) came up empty, so I've now looked for bloggers who were gaoled for their investigative work and open reporting. As I found out, there are whole Websites dedicated to this issue, including the Committee to Protect Bloggers who highlight the persecution of blogger-journalists around the world. Very interesting reading, especially also on the emerging networks of bloggers under threat in very different areas of the world.

A good day yesterday: not only did I receive my hardcopies of the Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production book, but the first chapters for the next book, Uses of Blogs, which Jo Jacobs and I are currently editing, have also come in (with a surprisingly large number of contributors requestion a week's extension, though). In fact, both Jo and I also had some further good news - I can't quite disclose mine just yet, but Jo will become the new Collaboration Manager for ACID! Congratulations, Jo, and great to have you on board.