This is kind of an barely coherent omnibus post full of points I’ve been meaning to make about social media here in London Ontario. I was kicked into doing this when I noticed I missed a couple of good posts on the subject from Titus Ferguson recently (now that I’ve figured out that Titus courteously doesn’t spam Twitter with blog post links I’m going to keep a closer eye on my London feeds).
I didn’t catch this post on London’s mainstream media until I saw it via Bill’s shared items. Bill commented about the possibility of blog-to-print publishing and it occurred to me that printing some kind of compendium (annually?) is a great idea I’d never thought of before. It kind of reminded me of the compilations CDs featuring local bands I listened to in high school.
It doesn’t have to cost anything — that’s my naive understanding anyways — by using a print-on-demand service. Then again if one of the underlying aims of all this is to improve civic life in London then it might be better to engage with people and companies locally — not just give them the business but build connections and share awareness of emerging online opportunities…
My inclination is that we shouldn’t try over-organizing a community — but this might have more to do with my own bias against organizing or planning anything. I’m just the guy who thinks and writes about stuff, then thinks and writes about different stuff the next day…
Either way we need more focal points, “town squares,” common points of reference for framing future discussions — things to use for getting a sense of where everyone else stands.
For example, A Channel and the London Free Press serve this purpose — though perhaps insufficiently… they at least provide references we can assume that most Londoners will be familiar with. (In a post last August I cited articles arguing “newspapers are the central banks of social currency.”) We can say, “Did you see such-and-such on the front page of the paper?” and we get a sense of the person we’re dealing with based on their opinions.
With blogging and social media, references are even more real and important: they’re literally coded as links (or ought to be).
Of course linking to each other is a start. E.g. What did you think of Phronk’s ironic attempt to sell out without actually selling out?… Have you noticed Greg Fowler has been blogging like a demon possessed lately? I’m glad he stepped to Jim Chapman’s ill-thought remarks (wasn’t it PluggedIn Nick who brought it up on Twitter that day?)… What do you think of Kevin Van Lierop’s PhotoWalk idea?… I like James Shelley’s posts at From My Bottom Step too…. Did anyone else notice there’s, like, a whole UWO class that started blogs in January? What do you think of that/those? I found them through Elizabeth (whose blog I don’t read because the RSS feed is only titles!) after she left a comment on Dan Brown’s blog… Are you going to the next MeetUp? (I am)… Are you going to PodCamp London? etc…
As it grows it’ll become (even more) impossible to keep track of everybody. More groups will develop, with a lot of overlaps, and more than a few interlopers. Even then (or especially then) we’ll need a few high profile things (like PodCamp, like the mainstream outlets) that everyone knows about so London’s social media community has a sense of coherence and integrity.
The thing with London, as Titus pointed out, is that it’s small enough to have the feel of a small town. We can all do different things but we’re never very far apart. You can meet up with anyone on short notice for a coffee or a beer.
Geographically we’re not far apart, culturally we’re not far apart, but “hypertextually” it feels like we’re still too far apart.
