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.

The last session for today starts with a massively multi-authored paper on Conversation and connectivity in the blogosphere from a group of researchers at Indiana University - I'm counting some seven names on the by-line. Elijah Wright is the first spokesperson.

BROG Group: What Is the Level of Conversations in Blogs?

Elijah begins with some basic definitions of the blogosphere as the intellectual cyberspace inhabited by bloggers, and of blogs as community and blogging as social interaction. There are therefore some very significant claims that have been made of the conversational potential of blogging - but how much conversation is taking place in the blogosphere, and how much social interaction do they therefore support?

The first post-lunch session on this second AoIR 2005 day is on 'Mobile Technologies and Societal Transformation'.

Gitte Stald: Mobile Phone Use amongst Danish Youth

Gitte Stald from the University of Copenhagen is the first speaker, presenting on democracy and citizenship possibilities in a mobile Internet environment. Mobile media are already integrated with a large part of everyday life in developed nations; of course we have always been mobile, both in  a geographical as well as symbolic sense. But today, digital media provide us with the locality and space for interaction, exchange, and proximity.

My first session on this second day of the Association of Internet Researchers conference 2005 in Chicago is on the 'Internal Dynamics of Online Spaces'.

Janet Armentor-Cota: Uses of Web Chat

Janet Armentor-Cota from Syracuse University is the first speaker, presenting on the dynamics of a Web chat community. The paper she presents here is coming out of her dissertation, and looks at a Northeast (U.S.) romance chat room. Web chat, of course, is usually real time, multi-participant, and consists of messages of short length, with almost constant traffic around the clock. Web chat is also a multimedia phenomenon and can incorporate images and audio and video streams. So, how do processes and structures of multimedia technologies organise the chat space, and what processes occur here?

The first of the afternoon sessions this Thursday at AoIR 2005 is on 'Participation and Trust in Online Communities'. Andrew Cox from the University of Sheffield is the first presenter. 

Andrew Cox: The Parameters of an Online Community

Andrew's work looked at the links and knowledge sharing amongst people working in different organisations and across different organisational jurisdictions - in this case, the Web developers working for universities. There are a number of online spaces available to them, some used, some not, as well as various conferences. in the UK, they continue to use listservs as a key tool, and in the U.S., the main equivalent uwebd is also listserv-based, and has seen a continuing importance (even though we might consider mailing-lists as a somewhat old-fashioned CMC tool by now). There has been some decrease in list membership in recent years, however, declining by some 5% per annum since 2003. It is also interesting that some 25% of list members have turned off mail delivery of the list (presumably accessing the list via the Web?). And there is ongoing churn of members (new members joining, old members dropping out). List traffic is around 120 per month, and again this has declined gradually in recent years.

Well, the 2005 Association of Internet Researchers conference is finally underway. We start the Thursday morning 'Civic Engagement' session at with a paper by Irene Ramos-Vielba on the use of political blogs in Portugal and Spain, and their potential contribution to democracy.

Irene Ramos-Vielba: Political Blogs in Spain and Portugal

Blogs have of course be recognised in the Anglo-Saxon context already, so how does this play out elsewhere? Are blogs creating an authentic political sphere for deliberation and political action? Journalism and politics are of course two of the key fields which have been affected by blogs as they comment on and promote discussion on political issues - but what is the contribution made? A polarisation between civil pessimists and civil optimists has now perhaps been overcome - we are no longer prediction either a utopia or dystopia that is likely to be brought about by blogs. Rather, what emerges is perhaps an additional political sphere which allows for communal and multidirectional exchange, and may enhance the democratic process.

• 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

Heh. Our recently announced book project Uses of Blogs is starting to build some interest. I've seen a number of visitors come in from Furl blogs over the last couple of days, and it's interesting to see some of the comments from people who are using Furl to blog about the book. My favourite comment so far:

If I used Amazon, I'd put it on my wish list.

Check the Furl reference for the Uses of Blogs entry for more information.

I'm heading off to Canberra on Monday, where I'm speaking at a conference on Archiving Web Resources organised by the National Library of Australia. My topic is "Contemporary Culture and the Web" - not an easy area to summarise in 30 minutes! This conference follows on from the IIPC meeting at the British Library which I attended in Septemb