Week 3 -- feet wet & hands dirty

Very busy week this week learning about platforms for communities. I sent my first tweet and am trying to figure who to "follow" and how to find them. I will look at integrating Twitter and Facebook and use the one community to inform the other.

I also started Diigo. I'm a little worried about having my references spread out in too many sources (RefWorks, Aladdin, my own files by topic). Also when I downloaded Diigo (and added the toolbar), I was quickly frustrated by my web searches being limited to Diigo (I love Google and Google Scholar!) I tried to get around this and finally uninstalled Diigo -- THREE times! It would not go away. Now, each time I uninstalled, Diigo asked for a message for "why" and I answered losing my Google search. I've since learned (in my determination to use google) that Diigo has just been added as search engine -- I can choose my search engine (magnifying glass top right corner). Now, I'm thankful I don't have to reinstall Diigo. I have the best of all possible worlds (to date).

I've been reading and doing tutorials for PHPbb3 and trying to find the best platform for my produsage project. I envisioned a community forum where contributors could post original offering and others could comment (like a discussion board) but where threads could be archived and searchable by tags.

I first considered a blog -- blogs, however, are organized temporally -- in a chronology or time-based logic. This is well aligned with a journal or diary, but not well suited for topics. I envision the community as a combination of citizen journalism -- news of the day -- and reference for past stories. I wouldn't want to search topics by date -- I would want to retrieve topically, regardless of date. Would TAGS serve this purpose? I'm not convinced. I want the page to be user-friendly and intuitive with minimal guidance.

I then considered a wiki -- wikis are arranged by space. Wikis are great for editing and revising (Wikipedia). My vision, however, is sharing personal/professional stories. Since the stories are personal narratives, it seems inappropriate to edit or change someone else's story. The knowledge building in this community comes from sharing and interacting, not from altering the original experience.

I am therefore attracted to Joomla and the discussion board format with search capabilities. The technical skills to launch (just the description of requirements alone was filled with unfamiliar terms) are beyond my present capability. PHPbb3 looks like a novice friendly place to start, but I need a domain. Argh! So many steps before the first step!

So, then I started the BigDaddy process. Again, although BigDaddy caters to those with no technical, programming or html skills whatsoever, it still asked questions I didn't know how to answer. And it never asked if I wanted a discussion board -- which I do!!! I think if I remove the blog feature, I may get my discussion board. Hard to say. BigDaddy wants to know if I want to allow blogs (is that webspeak for discussion posts?), photo gallery (if I say no, am I unable to upload pics?), and # of pages (err, uhh, does that count archives?).

If I don't get my discussion board, I plan to integrate PHPbb3 into my BigDaddy address.

I figure this course is all about getting my feet wet and hands dirty. Feet wet --exploring tentatively different tools; hands dirty -- actively using the tool (blogging). Once I have my feet wet and hands dirty, I can really start playing in the mud. Hopefully after my mudfest, I can clean up my site for perpetuity. Or, perhaps the gritty realism will be an attractive feature???

Produsage: unfinished artefacts, continuing process, evolution, gradual improvement

PREVIEW: work environment learning & performance