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But the game is still young…
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Vote for Boss Ross
The Boss.
Boss Ross is running for a position on the board of CIRA,
the Canadian Internet Registration Authority. CIRA operates the .ca (as
in Canada) country code top level domain — that is, if you own or are
buying a .ca domain, you’re dealing with them either directly or
indirectly.
Why is he doing this? It’s definitely not for fame and fortune:
I
want to do this for one simple reason – its important to me to
make a contribution to Canada’s local internet. I’ve spent the last 15
years of my online life working on international projects, ICANN,
Tucows and so on. Working on more local projects is something that I
want to devote more time to, and I can’t think of a better place to
start. Canada is a world-leader as far as the internet is concerned.
CIRA sits at the front of Canada’s internet. What is benefits CIRA,
benefits Canada – which leads to a strong global internet.
Starting
in our respective backyards is a great way to make sure that
tomorrow’s internet holds the same promise as the internet we all
benefit from today.
If you own a .ca domain name, you are a member of CIRA and are
eliglible to nominate Ross for the position. Frankly — and this is
only just a little bit of sucking up to the boss — I can’t think of
anyone more qualified to sit on the board.Just look at the guy’s
internet governance credentials:
- Active in the formation leading to CAIP, Canadian Association of
Internet Service Providers as one of the founding directors of RISC.
- Member of IAHC, a predecessor organization that lead to the formation of ICANN.
- Past-member of ICANN’s General Assembly
- Active member of ICANN’s Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO)
- Current constituency representative to ICANN’s GNSO Council
- Highly involved in several internet and ICANN working groups
dealing with specific policy and technical issues including Whois data
protection, registration portability and equivalent access.
And let’s not forget that he’s also Director of Research and Innovation for Tucows, Inc, registrar for over 4 million domain names — one in ten top-level general top-level domain named is registered through us.
Simply put, Ross knows his stuff.
If you have a .ca domain name, nominate Ross!
Once again, it’s time for the Carnival of the Canucks, a regular series in which a Canadian blogger features links to interesting entries on other Canadian blogs.
The new Carnival is hosted by Eva of Easternblog.
Eva is an actual real-life honest-to-goodness scientist, and in the
spirit of her calling, has built her Carnival around the theme of Science and Blogging. Nicely done, Eva!
(Let’s not forget the ringleader of the Carnival, Mr. David P. Janes of the blog Ranting and Roaring. Thanks, David!)
Saturday, April 17, 2004 — 10:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.
David Weinberger, discussion leader
- Blogs seem to have underpeformed in businesses that would benefit: business that have high contact witgh their customers
- In
the mid-90s: “Create your own homepage” software was all the rage. It
didn’t take off, but blogs — a variation on that theme — did
- “Maybe weblogs don’t fit very well in the business world”
- “What is the Blogging ROI?”
- Why aren’t businesses blogging?
- Which types, if any?
- What stops them?
- Culture?
- No business case
- Does blogging matter to business? It does if communication is key
Discussion on internal blogs
(i.e. blogs accessible only by those within the company
- There are legal issues: whatever appears on an internal blog could be considered property of the company
- The content of an internal blog could be subpoenaed
- Blogging as cheap knowledge management software: blogs let you look up solutions to problems found months ago
- Ethan Zuckerman: Prospect Foundation taking on blogging as an internal communcations tool.
- An interesting intersection of blogging and intellectual property: a biotech company’s lawyers:
- Don’t want the sales/marketing department blogging internally, as the entries may contain subpoena-able competitive info
- But they do want the scientists blogging internally so they can see their ideas and scour for what’s patentable
- Blogging
can be a useful way to get the message across within a company where
email fails. Email is often perceived as “permanent and negative”,
while the same thing said in an internal blog will not be seen in the
same light.
Discussion on external blogs
(i.e. blogs accessible to the public)
- What do you do when the rank and file are perceived as speaking “on behalf of company”?
- The
marketing/PR department of a company would probably resist blogs: it
encroaches on their turf and surrenders their control of “the message”
- Legal department of a company would probably also resist blogs: headaches
- Lawyer’s
dilemma: What if you’re a lawyer, you argue one side of a case in your
blog and then find yourself arguing the opposite in court? Can your
blog entry be used against you?
- Weinberger: Would CEOs even
blog? Don’t they still print out their email? [ Our CEO, Elliot Noss,
has probably forgotten more about email than I will ever learn. And
yes, he has a blog. — Joey ]
- Useful for companies with international clientele: it’s great at overcoming time zone and real-time issues
- It has been recommended to many companies to get a blog simply because it helps you get a better ranking on Google
- Examples of business blogging at businessblogconsulting.com (Rick Bruner’s blog)
- Re:
fear of putting out the wrong message with a blog — We’ll all
eventually be able to embarrass each other via Google. Is that going to
happen in business?
- Weinberger: Will Prell ever have a blog for their shampoo?
- For small businesses that exist only online, blogs are useful
- Ethan
Zuckerman: Once worked with a Hollywood studio on a system that allowed
fans to create their own fan sites. The studio insisted that all sites
had to be vetted.
Blogs and perception of the company
- People know a fake when they see one — fauxblogs, like Raging Cow were a bad idea
- Blogger damage control: witness the Plaxo debacle. It got so bad that at PC Forum, their Privacy Officer had to respond
A cute phrase that came up during the discussion: “Blog-curious”
Weinberger: It doesn’t make sense for companies to just jump into blogging. They’re going to read them first.
Saturday, April 17th, 2004 — 9:00 a.m. to 10:15 a.m.
Lisa Williams, discussion leader
- Lisa: Developers work in the dark
- A couple of answers to Lisa’s first question: “Why do you blog?”
- “I’m a poser, I don’t blog”
- Dan Bricklin: Likes the feedback, does it for business reasons, express himself, connect with people
- Some discussion about categories — someone remarked that they wish categories could have subcategories [ Blogware does this! — Joey ]
- Comments discussion
- Does any one have problems with comments? Technical or people?
- Jeff Jarvis has “rules of engagement” (which appear in the sidebar of his blog)
- Lisa has her own set of rules, including the Living Room Doctrine for comments (which appears in this post).
- Losing posts in web-based blogging tools
- “Use Control-A Control-C!”
- Wishlist
- A service that let you republish someone else’s RSS onto your site
- A blogging tool for note-taking
- Different kinds of entries with different features, depending on the entry type: journal, link, opinion, response, etc.
- Threaded comments which allowed you to respond to other comments rather than just the article [ Blogware has this! — Joey ]
- Would like to Subscribe to a comments thread [ Blogware will have this! — Joey ]
- Would like to be able to draw pictures
- Text-to-speech blog: would like to be able to listen to blog while driving or working on other things
- Better support for audioblogging
- Better support for videoblogging
- Better support for accessibility
- A way to migrate a comment to the level of a post
- Some way to automatically blog my comments made on other people’s blogs — maybe in a sideblog
- Ability to ignore a specific commenter
- Jeff Sandquist: Different people want to converse differently — comments / discussion group / chat etc