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.

It's been a busy week with progress on various fronts - but no specific news as yet (this will change by tomorrow, hopefully). So, instead of a blow-by-blow update of what's been happening, here's a quick link cloud of my recent del.icio.us bookmarks for your enjoyment... To be expanded in due course!

Some people have too much time on their hands. Via YouTube:

Throughout this week, my students in the KKB018 Creative Industries unit are exhibiting their project proposal posters. KKB018 is a core unit in the Creative Industries Faculty, and for many of them is the first unit which introduces them to the core concepts in creative industries theory and practice, which is always something of a challenge - especially considering that students in the unit come from all disciplines across the Faculty: there are dancers and journalists, writers and communication designers, actors and musicians, fashion designers and filmmakers. So, one key aspect of the unit is also to encourage interdisciplinary approaches, of course.

I developed the unit in 2001, as the first of its kind in the world, and I've run it ever since (and for the last time this semester). Developing the content structure itself was relatively straightforward: there's a good deal of core theory which quite clearly needs to be covered. What was more difficult was to come up with an effective, authentic, and interesting assessment structure that went beyond the standard (and boring) 'regurgitate theory by writing an academic essay' model. Last year, I think I finally cracked that challenge: I worked out that beyond all disciplinary knowledge, amongst the core skills our students will need to acquire is the ability to develop, propose, and critically assess project ideas. Whether pitching a story idea to an editor or producer, proposing a creative project to a funding agency, applying for funding for a research project, or presenting a new product to the company board, what they will have to do in their future careers as creative practitioners is to come up with that great idea, present it effectively, and demonstrate that it would be appropriate both for the organisation they're proposing it to, and for the local, national, and global environment within which they're operating. And if they're not developing new projects themselves, then chances are they're probably working for the organisation, assessing projects which other creative practitioners have proposed.

"I'm writing this on the plane back from Canberra," I was going to write, "where I've spent the last couple of days hobnobbing with the high and mighty." That was two weeks ago, but of course on the plane back I promptly fell asleep, not so much from hobnobbing but simply from a packed two-day programme which had started with a 5.15 a.m. flight out of Brisbane on Tuesday 28 March. So, here's a belated follow-up on my trip to the "Expanding Horizons" event which the Council for the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences had organised...

At the beginning of this week I posted a question about alternatives to Endnote and other bibliographic tools on the Association of Internet Researchers list, as well as on my blog. There response from my peers has been very strong, with a number of options emerging. As a reminder, what I was especially keen on were tools which would allow me to store multiple quotations against a single source - something Endnote isn't very good at at all. Some people did suggest adding quotes into a customised notes field within Endnote, but I don't feel that this is a very effective solution; someone also suggested storing references and quotations simply in a Word document, which is in fact what I did with the research for my book Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production, but that's probably not a sustainable option in the long term - good tag, search and filter functionality would be very welcome. Another generic alternative would be to use a blog for storing references, but this means that you have to be connected to add new items, and (unless there's a conversion script available) also doesn't offer functionality for formatting references in different bibliographic styles.

I've been invited to take part in a two-day event in Canberra this coming week, organised by the Council for Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (CHASS) - they're inviting early-career researchers (a definition which I'm slowly starting to slide out of) to talk to politicians about their research in order to better inform members of the legislative about current research agendas and the need for policies which address these aims and build on the findings.

As part of the 'Expanding Horizons' programme, we'll have breakfast with Julie Bishop, the Federal Minister for Education, Science and Training, morning tea with the Lindsay Tanner, Shadow Minister for Finance, and will then pair off to meet selected parliamentarians for more private meetings - I've been selected to talk to Senator George Campbell, the Oppositiom Whip. Along the way, we'll also hear from a variety of other high-profile politicians, researchers, and other officeholders in the nexus between education, research, and politics. Should be an interesting (and exhausting) programme!

I made the move to Firefox over the last few days, and as a result I've been exploring the wealth of Firefox extensions which is also available. One of them is Performancing, which adds a basic WYSIWYG offline editor for blog posts to Firefox - and this in turn brought me to look more widely at the current state of blog clients: software which enables the offline writing and editing of blog posts for later submission to a blog, using a standard XML-RPC interface. Unfortunately - especially as far as real WYSIWYG editing is concerned (as opposed to editing plain text with a few HTML tags thrown in) -, there still isn't that much out there. I did find at least a couple of promising options, though.