Leeds.
After my guest lecture at the University of Lincoln the other day, one of the students, David Lawson, sent me an email with a couple of very thoughtful questions. I thought I might as well answer them publicly - further comments are, as always, invited...

After thinking about your lecture and how it may relate to the work that I'm doing, I saw the connection. The new publishing mode that you propose, 'produsage', throws up the question of Does this model better fit today's society, with relation to people's attraction to media that has no set narrative trajectory? If users are finding, contributing to and distributing the news then where is the narrative structure of this medium?

I'm very happy to report that an update of my paper from last year's AolR conference, "Wikinews: The Next Generation of Online News?", has now been published as the lead article in Scan Journal. I was able to find some more recent statistics, which unfortunately confirm the trends I'd already seen at the end of 2005: Wikinews is stagnating, both in terms of new contributors and as far as content creation is concerned. In my opinion, this is due to a misinterpretation of the Neutral Point of View doctrine, which here leads to a counterproductive aversion to any kind of discussion of news and current events. (And let me be absolutely clear: I'm not arguing against NPOV as such here - Wikipedia's current events section does very good work covering the news, for example, so it can work very well in a news context.) Anyway - read the article in Scan Journal! Here's the issue announcement by editors Chris Atton and Graham Meikle:

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.

And we're in the first Association of Internet Researchers conference session for Saturday - unfortunately I couldn't blog the first presenter as she was running her Powerpoint off my laptop. Sunyi Lee from Northwestern University presented on possible business and licencing models for p2p filesharing, and ended with a useful point on the change of the conceptualisation of music, from music as product (selling CDs, DVDs, etc.) to music as service - where users may pay for access rather than distinct units of merchandise.

Sorin Matei: Mapping WiFi and Encryption in Lexington

The second speaker is Sorin Matei from Purdue University, presenting on the process of diffusion in wireless networks. Can there be a predictive model for the diffusion and encryption standards in wireless networking technologies (focussing here on WiFi, 802.11 standards)? What is interesting about WiFi is that at least in the beginning it was a replacement techniology for ethernet LANs, but was soon sold as a technology of freedom (from wires) in the residential market, creating always-on, personal connectivity. Further, WiFi can also be seen as a 'realm of dissent' in which the 'community network' movement can reinvent itself.

• 28 Sep., 1 p.m.: Produsers and Produsage - workshop at SUNY Buffalo
• 28 Sep., 6 p.m.: 'Anyone Can Edit': Understanding the Produser - guest lecture at SUNY Buffalo
• 30 Sep., 1.30 p.m.: Teaching Creativity in a Creative Town - exhibition in the Creativity Marketplace at the Creative Places + Spaces conference, Toronto
• 8 Oct., 8.30 a.m.: Wikinews: The Next Generation of Online News? - paper at the Association of Internet Researchers conference in Chicago
• 11 Oct., 10 a.m.: 'Anyone Can Edit': Understanding the Produser - guest lecture at New School, New York City
• 11 Oct., 6 p.m.: Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production - guest talk at The Thing / Postmasters Gallery, New York City
• 12 Oct., 12 noon: Public/Private Intersections in New Media - panel guest at Northeastern University, Boston
• 12 Oct., 5 p.m.: 'Anyone Can Edit': Understanding the Produser - guest lecture at Brown University, Providence
• 14 Oct., 12.30 p.m.: 'Anyone Can Edit': Understanding the Produser - guest lecture at Temple University, Philadelphia