In the session at Ahead of the Curve.
Stowe just finished up a great overview on blogs, blogging and podcasting, and now Bill Flitter is just finishing his presentation. The big take-away for me … RSS is still too complex. It’s too complex to explain … too complex to subscribe … too complex to “show” what an RSS feed is … too complex to communicate how and why it matters.
Once we get beyond the early-adopter crowd, what are the capabilities and metaphors that are needed to enable RSS to become so ubiquitous that we don’t need to go through the nitty-gritty details? (In other words…I don’t want to know how the internal combustion engine operates, I just want to reliably get to my destination.) Back in August, 2005, Chris Selland wrote:
“RSS is still very much the realm of early adopters (which is why only early-adopter-focused companies like Audible, Woot and HDNet are using it). But as RSS readers become more powerful and more ubiquitous – and particularly as they become more closely entwined with e-mail applications – expect the use of RSS to dramatically accelerate – much of it at the expense of e-mail.”
This is still on-target.
Randy Moss is now up presenting the first part of the social networking discussion, and talking about directed apophenia, and leading into a group exercise. Everyone in the room is up at the front of the room, showing their connections to the others in the room, via past experiences, hobbies, hometowns, schools, products/brands they are passionate about, and the like. (By the way, Randy’s book recommendation of the day: The Hidden Power of Social Networks by Rob Cross.)
Randy: “It’s critical for organizations to host communities. If a company does this, they’re the good guy, they are the one who is providing the network for individuals to connect.” (bravo!)
Michael Sevilla from Umbria is now presenting a state of the blogosphere preso. Now moving into a discussion of promoters and detractors, and is highlighting the Qwest’s Terms of Service flap. (Michael was affected by it.)
VERY interesting. Now going through things that one can do with OpinMind. For example, blog sentiment of Microsoft and Apple. (N.B. Kind of a neat tool, but it does not seem to have a deep listing of sources. Hopefully it’ll grow more over time.)
fin
(top photo: UChicago)
Great presentation today. I agree with your comment about the complexity of RSS. It’s really difficult (even for the extremely curious) to get an adequate feel for what it is and how it’s applied short of attending a seminar like the one today. Also, I was actually amazed at how difficult it is to subscribe to a specific feed.
But now that I know where to start, it’s going to be easy to find out what I want to know. So thanks!
JER (The Tipping Point)
Jill- Thanks for the good words! Looking forward to seeing you get up and running with this stuff! -c