Montréal.
Well, that's it - AoIR 2007 and WikiSym 2007 are over, the drizzle has caught up with me here in Montréal after a couple of very pleasant days with temperatures in the 20s; time to get back to the Australian spring. It's been a very successful if brief tour through Canada for these two conferences, and I've particularly enjoyed catching up with what by now feel like old friends from the Association of Internet Researchers, as well as meet a few new faces - you know who you are. It's a privilege to have been elected to the executive of such a vibrant community - and I look forward to seeing everyone again for AoIR 2008 in Copenhagen (which looks to be in very good hands).

Montréal.
The next session this second day of WikiSym 2007 is on political wikis, but opens with a paper by Renée-Marie Fountain on co-constructed development via communal constructivism in an educational environment. She begins with a nod towards the idea of the wisdom of the crowds, and especially perhaps of student crowds which we touched upon yesterday, and notes that in constructivist approaches students are invited to construct learning for as well as with others. This pursues what can be described as 'impossible public goods'.

Vancouver.
Wow, time has passed quickly (and very enjoyably). We're in the final session of AoIR 2007 here in Vancouver, and Chris Wells and Justin Reedy are the first speakers; their interest is in the use of Internet in direct democracy. Direct democracy in the U.S. and elsewhere is increasingly common, increasingly important, and different from conventional democratic forms in important ways (the European constitutional referenda in a number of countries are one key example here, while in a number of U.S. states there have been referenda on limiting property tax rates).

Vancouver.
I may be at AoIR 2007 in Vancouver, but back in Australia our Club Bloggery series as part of the ABC's online Australian election coverage continues. The third instalment of Club Bloggery has now been posted on the ABC site, and we've also posted a version of the article to our Gatewatching group blog:

Beyond Gotcha: Blogs as a Space for Debate

By Jason Wilson, Axel Bruns, and Barry Saunders

The mainstream media and critics of Web 2.0's "cult of the amateur" often suggest that blogs and citizen journalism will never replace their mainstream counterparts because they "don't break stories". Notwithstanding the fundamental furphy - who ever said anything about "replacing" the MSM anyway? - there is some truth in this. It goes without saying that most bloggers don't have the resources, pulling power or proximity to the pollies to do much original political reporting: this is something that most sensible public affairs bloggers concede. (Though how often the mainstream media really break stories - as against exploiting deliberate, calculated 'leaks' from party spinsters - is a separate question.)

Well, the next instalment of our Club Bloggery series for ABC Online has now been published. On the Gatewatching blog which Jason Wilson, Barry Saunders and I run, we've posted a slightly earlier, longer version of the piece, which asks quite simply what we know about the real impact of blogging on political debate in Australia, beyond the realm of those already addicted to the machinations of the political scene...

Blogging outside the Echo Chamber

By Axel Bruns, Jason Wilson, and Barry Saunders

In the current political climate, it's no surprise that a number of sessions at the recent Australian Blogging Conference at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane focussed on the potential for blogs and other citizen journalism sites to impact on political news and punditry. In a previous article, we've already noted the continuing skirmishes between psephologist bloggers and the political commentators, whose rather unscientific interpretation of opinion poll results that some bloggers have challenged fervently.

The second of our weekly series on pre-election blogging for ABC Online's Opinion section has just gone online, and we've also found a name for the series - Club Bloggery. I'm very pleased to say that it's also been crossposted to the ABC's Election Tracker site, and an extended version is now up on our group blog Gatewatching. The first instalment generated some interesting discussion (which I'll refer back to in the third piece I'm currently developing) - hope it will be the same for this one:

Club Bloggery Part 1: Consulting Bloggers as Citizens

By Barry Saunders, Jason Wilson and Axel Bruns

The 2007 federal election is shaping up as a chance for Australian political bloggers to show off their skills. From now until the votes are counted, Club Bloggery will wrap up the biggest news from the blogosphere.

No, the book isn't getting a re-release (yet). There's a lot of other activity going on around the fields of citizen journalism, news blogging, and online opinion writing, so Barry, Jason, and I thought it would be a good idea to set up a group blog dedicated to tracking these developments - and I'm pleased to announce that our new blog at Gatewatching.org is now open for business. This doesn't mean that I'll stop blogging here, of course - but my citizen journalism-related thoughts, and the outcomes of our collaboration on Youdecide2007 and beyond, are going to be collected there (as well as cross-posted here where appropriate). Come join us as we try to make sense of it all.

This launch also coincides neatly with the start of a series of posts we'll do for the ABC Online opinion section over the coming weeks (and throughout the Australian election campaign) - we've been asked to report from the political blogosphere in an effort to highlight the best ideas emerging from outside the mainstream media. It seems appropriate in this context that our first post to the ABC site is a rumination on the interrelationship (and increasing interweaving) between industrial and citizen journalism, touching on the 12 July meltdown at The Australian as well as the crategate story we managed to uncover through Youdecide2007.

I would have liked to mention this here some time ago, but with one thing and another (such as my trip to PerthDAC) I just didn't get around to it. Anyway, for those of you within two days' travel of Brisbane: Peter Black from QUT's Law Faculty is organising Australia's first blogging conference this coming Friday (28 September 2007), at the Creative Industries Precinct. True to the theme, the conference won't be a broadcast-style 'shut up and listen to my paper' affair, but a discussion-based unconference (similar perhaps to the Fibreculture conference I organised with Geert Lovink and Molly Hankwitz in 2003).

Unlike other conferences, I won't be blogging this one, though - both because of the paperless setup itself, and because I've been roped in to facilitate sessions throughout the day. In the morning, I'll co-chair the "Researching Blogging and Blogging Research" session with Jean Burgess and Mel Gregg (and I'll contribute a focus especially on crawling and mapping the blogosphere, an area which has been of increasing interest to me recently); in the afternoon I'm helping to run the citizen journalism session with Graham Young and Rachel Cobcroft (and no doubt we'll talk quite a bit about the 12 July incident, crategate, Youdecide2007, and other pre-election fun).

Sometimes things just come together. We've only done a soft launch of the Youdecide2007 site which will provide hyperlocal citizen journalism coverage of the upcoming federal election in Australia, with a number of electorate profiles, interviews with local citizen and MPs, news releases, and opinion pieces now available on the site - but that hasn't stopped the site from attracting a good number of visitors, some press coverage, and now even a mention in parliamentary question time. A little while ago, Jason Wilson did a phone interview with Liberal Party member for Herbert, Peter Lindsay (available on the site as a nice YouTube clip overlaid with images from the electorate). In the interview, the MP rather appears to digress from his prepared talking points (about half-way through the clip), and makes the somewhat general claim that "young people today are financially illiterate", thereby causing themselves unnecessary mortgage stress. The federal opposition was quick to pick up on the story, and the Honorable Kevin07 engaged in some opportunistic political point-scoring on the basis of the statement.

As we're slowly approaching the official start of the Australian federal election campaign (not that the unofficial campaign hasn't already started...), we're also getting very close to the launch of our citizen journalism site to accompany the election. This is the first major project in a three-year ARC Linkage research programme around citizen journalism which involves SBS, On Line Opinion, Cisco Systems, the Brisbane Institute, and my colleagues and me at QUT Creative Industries.