Posted: March 23rd, 2008 by Alison Ruth

Categorised as:  innovation  Learning 

This blog is a failure.  As a method of getting people to share ideas, blogs can be good.  They can be successful.  But they need to be 'in the flow' of the work we do.  There needs to be a reason for accessing them, there needs to be a reason for posting to them.  Why do we have blogs here?  Half of them have not been updated for ages.  It's a classic case of a half-baked idea.

There seems to be heaps of stuff around that works, stuff that helps the way we work.  I don't think these blogs add any value to our community.  Speaking of which, where is our community?  Do we still have a good sense of the Griffith Community?  Do we know who our community is?  And why are we trying to reach them?

I look at all the work I do, the ways in which I bring things together and, quite frankly, this blog slips out of the flow really easily.  It's so easy to lose site of the things that are happening, try though we might to keep up to date.  I have a real sense of running to keep up, and then losing sight of the things I've seen.  I have a delicious and a citeulike so I can refind stuff, but keeping stuff at the top of my mind in the face of increased pressure to teach, research and interact with the community (euphemistically called 'service' but kinda like paying one's dues) that things easily slip if there is not a way to remind me. 

I've managed to get most of the important stuff built into my interface to my computer, things like email warnings, weather alerts, journal alerts, and an array of other important things, but some things just slip past, they're not the most important thing I have to do today.  By the time I've done those, there's little time to contemplate the other really important things I need to do.

Which brings me back to this notion of 'in the flow'.  What are the activities that are 'in the flow'.  What are above the flow and why do they float up there? Why are there activities that we need to do, but just seem to be otherly?  

According to Andrew Macafee

The other category or activities, in-the-flow, enable people do their day-to-day work in the wiki [or other environment] itself. These wikis are typically replacing email, virtual team rooms, and project management systems.

But that's only half of it.  Even where things are 'in the flow', if it isn't easy, requiring only one or two extra steps, it just ain't gonna be used!  In some ways, each of these environments (blogs, wikis, email even) need to answer some need for the user.  What do I get out of this blog?  Not a lot - the interface is terrible (where are the customisation options?) or it's a (b)Lotus interface, there is no easy interaction with anyone who does happen to stop by, there's no way for me to know if, in fact, someone has stopped by.  I don't have access to a whole slew of resources that I do at my own blog.  But even that one is out of my flow. 

Which brings the next point. What about the stuff that falls below the flow? These are probably the enjoyable parts of our activities, but activities that we don't have time for.  I know I'd love to spend a whole heap more time reflecting, codifying and sharing, but frankly, I have e nough to do already.

Academia is supposed to be about joining ideas.  About taking the small pieces and making something more.  We can only do it within very small ways, and our technology is not helping.  Far from it, in fact, there seems to be too many controls in place.

I was going to mention that no matter where I blog, I still haven't seemed to find my 'blogging voice', but maybe I also haven't found my 'blogging space'.

_{And where is the preview button?  It took me seven clicks to go from saving the document to seeing it again to edit it.  And why doesn't one of the buttons say 'publish'? why is there a drop down status menu to select 'published' and only a 'save document' button.  Fneh!}

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