Irc Chat Notes

2005-12-20: IRC Chat notes (from irc.freenode.net#usthem): [11:00am] choconancy joined the chat room.

[11:00am] choconancy: Finally

[11:00am] choconancy: Could not connect to the server for a while

[11:00am] choconancy: I'm on the line

[11:12am] choconancy: Checkin

[11:12am] choconancy: Bill in NY, transit strike, lots of ussing and themming going on

[11:12am] choconancy: Tish - resulting instability. We want your firstborn to get the contract.

[11:14am] choconancy: Dennis: has a headache and is having trouble sleeping. Abandoned his master's thesis. Freedom, but still feels jammed up

[11:14am] choconancy: Has not gotten back into reading blogs, papers, as the incomplete work is unresolved.

[11:15am] choconancy: Getting snarky on open format, open document vs MSFT situation.

[11:15am] choconancy: Yup

[11:15am] choconancy: Taking notes

[11:16am] choconancy: Tish: just finished an article on women in blogging, 2200 words, 700 words over, hope gets paid for all of them. Got offered an editorship. TBA.

[11:17am] choconancy: Tish: always too busy, non generating income, busiest unemployed person I know

[11:17am] choconancy: Would like to use powers to generate income.

[11:17am] band_: Ed's birthday - walking tour of town and end at library

[11:18am] choconancy: Ed: Celebrated his birthday - (great post sez the peanut gallery). Did a walking tour of town, ended up talking with friends at the Library. Ed brought chocolate! Was a big hit. Big plus thing that happened this month.,

[11:18am] choconancy: Ed: New job Jan 1, working with a web design firm in Ann Arbor.

[11:18am] band_: work sounds nice

[11:18am] choconancy: Tish: was told she was too nice to have a blog called snarkaholic

[11:18am] band_: Tish: too nice to be snarky

[11:19am] choconancy: Napster? HorsePigCow?? So their names fit?

[11:20am] choconancy: Snarky among friends is different than snarky among strangers

[11:20am] choconancy: Ben got caught being snarky in public

[11:21am] choconancy: Grace: The people who have to be nice all the time, even when snarky - I danced around that on blogsisters. I can't imagine Les Blogs scenario - that would never happen at blogger because we are primed to be nice women. But that is so much more accessible than "bullshit" or "screwyou" which loses the comment.

[11:22am] choconancy: Grace: OK. Been doing some networking with Katrina blogs. Hooked up with Sam Perry, digital vision fellowship person at Stanford, taking Grace under wing. Spoke at old high school about hurricane Katrnia - really great.

[11:22am] choconancy: Grace: daughter has mono and hep. Not nice.

[11:22am] choconancy: She has to be tucked in. Upside - she has medical waiver from PE for the rest of year. Free time!

[11:23am] choconancy: Tough one watching your kid be sick. But nothing compared to catastrophic diseases. You get so enclosed in your own life, mother child dyad, everything stops around you except for your kid being sick.

[11:23am] choconancy: Looking forward to Texas, hope I can go that she is up and ready.

[11:24am] choconancy: Denise: I wish I was Tish. Would like to be busily unemployed (except not in the north). Beets being busily employed. Company launched health professional blogs recently. One nightmare after another. The biggest us/them I've experience (beyond ex husband/custody).

[11:25am] choconancy: we were told we wanted to do blogs "the right way". Trained awesome docs/nurses/diaticians. They made great blog posts. Then company said they wanted them like features in a mag. Not expectation. Had to start over. Some started over. D went back to her real job and removed from the blog stuff. Do need to get paid. Dangerous. Other people said we'll help out, but want to convince the PTB...

[11:26am] choconancy: ...to do it the right way. Evolving that way.

[11:26am] choconancy: Making some progress with "the people upstairs"

[11:27am] choconancy: Interesting us them in that story!

[11:28am] choconancy: People don't read instructions. Denise would weave bits of advice into an email conversation.

[11:29am] choconancy: Higher ups did not like the political blog posts they saw. Did not want investors to see it

[11:30am] band_: Blogs are what we want them to be? If only ...

[11:30am] choconancy: They did not like opinions. Grace story of a film site. Personal view. Language and legal things. Control issues.

[11:30am] choconancy: Also wanted blogs search engine optimized. Can you imagine that.

[11:30am] band_: "search engine optimized" ... no we're really lost

[11:31am] band_: er, now we're really lost

[11:32am] band_: Nancy: son's first heartbreak ... also causes an inward focus

[11:33am] band_: project on internal and external communications - results will be ignored; no resources set aside for real change

[11:34am] band_: project funder, also for other projects - scientific mindset - things work like a chemical reaction - catalyst

[11:34am] band_: who to talk with? complicity us/them

[11:34am] band_: complicit enough to get the money

[11:35am] band_: DEH cynical about homeland security and star wars ...

[11:36am] band_: Nancy: us them in a different way? what's the cost of not dealing w/ underlying issues

[11:36am] band_: Nancy: a different kind of being nice; complicit sometimes for good reasons

[11:37am] band_: Ben and Mena: Mena asked for civilty in blogs; others don't want that

[11:37am] band_: what happens when we say what we really think

[11:39am] band_: who's saying it. what they look like. tone of voice.

[11:41am] band_: Ben and Mena backchannel: being cute

[11:42am] choconancy: Sorry stopped taking notes for a few minutes... I was needing to stand up and stretch my back

[11:42am] choconancy: Projecting backchannel - like being in a comedy club and putting the spotlight on the heckler

[11:44am] choconancy: Backchannel - schoolkids back in the corner being cute? What happens when it is not private. How we allow ourselves to act in private settings.

[11:44am] choconancy: Small groups are not necessarily wise groups

[11:44am] band_: and neither are large groups

[11:44am] choconancy: Backchannel was public. Ben seemed to think it was one way public.

[11:44am] choconancy: People don't want to be called out if their blogs are civil or not

[11:44am] choconancy: Really personal - that's the key about choosing civility. Being accountable and responsible for our own behaviors. Others perceive it as being controlled by others.

[11:45am] choconancy: Whether or not being civil is seen as a corageious act

[11:45am] choconancy: Civility is often seen as "selling out"

[11:45am] choconancy: Sets up an odd dynamic. If you have to sell out in order to be heard a certain way, unless you are the bete noir of the group who can say whatever they want. So there is an inclination not to be civil.

[11:45am] choconancy: Is being civil uncool?

[11:45am] band_: corporate settings I have known ...

[11:45am] band_: drama?

[11:46am] choconancy: That kind of drama is not allowed in many corporate settings. Frowned upon

[11:46am] band_: neutrality?

[11:46am] choconancy: Not so much civility, but neutrality. Coming in with your point.

[11:46am] band_: but this is a critique, not a suggestion

[11:46am] choconancy: There's no time for "bullshit" and "asshole" in some settings. Want to get to the point

[11:46am] choconancy: Appreciated Ben's point, but it was disguised by his approach.

[11:47am] choconancy: People who are out to make a difference can't afford to be nice - many of us don't believe that!

[11:47am] choconancy: Law in NJ, institutions liable for illeagal content on behalf of employees. Lessig case in NJ.

[11:48am] choconancy: A law excluded NPOs from severe employee misconduct. In this case a boys school where the kids were abused. So NJ changed the law. A big deal. A result of someone outing himself as being one of these kids.

[11:48am] choconancy: The unwillingness of institutions to settle or demonstrate remedy. This guy could not be "nice" about this. He was injured, hurt and outraged.

[11:48am] choconancy: People determined to make a change have to be willing to step on toes and clean it up.

[11:49am] band_: DEH: people determined to make a difference need to step on toes and need to clean it up?

[11:49am] choconancy: Slightly different issue. Challenging the status quo is necessary. But doing it on a blog in an intellectual, putting the point across without personal attack instead of adolescent personal attack.

[11:49am] choconancy: We can have arguments without being personal.

[11:50am] choconancy: is there a perception that nice=weak

[11:51am] choconancy: Large public government meetings. There is corporate and political cultures in different cities. Seattle - laid back expectation, informal close, granola-y but in fact they are highly combative.

[11:51am] band_: Jim Benson: local culture effects on meetings

[11:52am] choconancy: In portland meetings are cooperative and goal oriented. Difference in regional approaches. Perhaps similar situation here. People in blogs level of combativness may be indicative of how much they feel (or don't feel) part of the process they are blogging about.

[11:52am] choconancy: Critique of Mena that she was not speaking in cultural context of Europe.

[11:53am] band_: League of Civil Bloggers

[11:53am] choconancy: There can be neutrality. Badge on blog. You're welcome to comment, but please, we won't allow the following.... People self regulate. Envision a league of civil bloggers. Fellowship of neutral bloggers. Welcome to talk about stuff, but here are our codes.

[11:53am] choconancy: communication not combat

[11:53am] choconancy: Continue to use the word civil, not neutral

[11:53am] choconancy: neutral would appeal to those who resist civil and nice

[11:53am] choconancy: Clashes of cultures

[11:54am] choconancy: Clashes of socioeconomic understanding things, clashes of intent (entertain, inform, get attention)

[11:54am] choconancy: Getting a better understanding of the word civility, beyond this "nice" thing which has an air of not challenging the status quo or willingness to disagree.

[11:54am] choconancy: Need a type of communications skills.

[11:55am] choconancy: Nice= supressing one's point of view to avoid confrontation or unpleasantness. One meaning

[11:55am] choconancy: Sometimes mailing list moderator has to be ruthless to keep a discussion civil at the expense of potentially squashing out a topic

[11:56am] choconancy: Can you be civil and not nice?

[11:56am] choconancy: Takes courage to speak your truth. Stand for yourself without diminishing others

[11:57am] choconancy: Some are fueled by snark and nastiness

[11:57am] choconancy: Civility takes 10 cleansing breath. That takes time. It diminishes the power of the adreniline. Snark feeds the ego, not the idea

[11:57am] choconancy: Taking stuff personally. The other side of it.

[11:58am] choconancy: When we take stuff personally we react to the person and it gives us permission to do that.

[11:58am] choconancy: Then the retort - "you are taking it too personally."

[11:58am] choconancy: Not so much about separating from the personal, but holding both.

[11:59am] choconancy: Snark - part of the ecosystem and the egosystem.

[11:59am] band_: emo

[11:59am] choconancy: Emo - emotional punk

[12:00pm] choconancy: Is blogging an ecosystem? An egosystem? An emosystem?

[12:00pm] choconancy: Geek influence.

[12:02pm] band_: Time boundary ....

[12:03pm] band_: Each domain has its own culture ...

[12:03pm] choconancy: Different blogging cultures in different domains. Food, pregnancy, education

[12:03pm] band_: Z-list blogger

[12:08pm] choconancy: *

[12:08pm] choconancy: http://www.metagrrrl.com/discardia/

[12:08pm] choconancy: Discardia is a floating holiday to celebrate letting go

[12:09pm] choconancy: It takes place in the time between the Solstices & Equinoxes and their following new moons.