I just filled out a survey about the students’ expectations for a new portal and social network for all students of the Freie Universität Berlin. I have to admit, I was quite surprised about the quality of the questions, the whole approach seems very promising to me. Let alone the fact to actually ask the users and recruit them for beta testing through a survey before starting to develop a social network platform is a plus. It seems ironic because this should be the case for all user driven online platforms but sadly enough is seldom the case.

If you are a FU student, take part in the survey until january 15th! Continue >>

Hans Rosling on TEDtalks“TED was born in 1984 out of the observation by Richard Saul Wurman of a powerful convergence between Technology, Entertainment and Design. The first TED included the public unveiling of the Macintosh computer and the Sony compact disc, while mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot demonstrated how to map coastlines with his newly discovered fractals and AI guru Marvin Minsky outlined his powerful new model of the mind.”

Now TED Talks features many, many highly interesting speeches online that are really worth watching. I especially enjoyed Hans Rosling’s speech about Gapminder and data visualization (sounds boring but he is entertaining, educating AND funny) and Barry Schwartz, author of “The paradox of choice” who explains why more choice does NOT mean more freedom, on the contrary. A point, I am pretty sure, all of you have discussed with friends considering what you want to be in this world and how the many possibilities we have these days are more a burden than alleviation.

Rember “Minority Report”? The best thing in this movie were the fascinating interfaces the policemen used to gather information. Big touchscreens that react to the movements of several fingers or even several hands on interactive walls or table tops. Well, there is something like this in reality and of course, I liked the idea of the digital touchscreen turntable (as seen in the picture).

Jeff Hahn and his colleagues at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University are working on that and there’s an impressive movie clip to visualize their efforts. Mindblowing, music by Peter Kruder.

[via sounds.imnetz]

“It is a dance organized by the drug lords, where the violence and frustration explodes.”
Remember “City of God?” I recently watched this great movie again.

So, what’s the origin of violence and war? The answer seems simple: Angry young men. Sociologically this is summarized in the theory of the “Youth Bulge” which describes the battle of the sons for the powerful positions in a society. Happens all over the world for centuries, again and again. Terror and war are the most recent outcomes, the scientist Gunnar Heinsohn has written a fascinating book about the connection between the spare sons, fundamentalism, terror and war: “Söhne und Weltmacht” And now enjoy a short clip from the VICE travel DVD “Surviving the slums of Rio” Continue >>

I like this video. Science, fights, only the music is missing. Edelman brings Technorati to the German market and the German blogosphere watchs critically and pretty unethusiastically. Get used to each other guys, maybe one day you’ll be doing business together! (or not).

(you can skip the introduction)
[via basicthinking]

Videopodcasts done by prominent bloggers and charismatic heads from the internetscene have been popping up recently (like the one I referred to yesterday) and here’s a little top 4 of what I think is worth watching.

Robert Scoble started a videoblog with interviewing Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s CEO

www.gruenderszene.de is a german videocast by one of the Spreadshirt founders Lukasz Gadowski focussing on German entrepreneurs like Continue >>

The other day, Peter and I interview Yochai Benkler about commons based peer production. He is a very smart and witty man and absolutely able to communicate his visionary ideas. We talked about the wealth of networks, collaboration on a global, individual scale and knowledge- and production sharing. We had twenty minutes, a little camera and could ask four questions. A very interesting morning, watch the whole interview at The Waving Cat. He also wrote a book and published it for free. For me, the most interesting question was how a theory of production can be generalized to producing other goods than media and his answer (click to continue) is fascinating. Continue >>

Wow, so many plans and no time to realize it all. So, note to self: Do it, lazy boy!

• 1st: Integrate tags into stylewalker – I have enough content now to tag it more thoroughly and it would be cool to let people participate – suggest tags and if I like them they will be part of the categorization. Does anyone know a good WP-plugin?

• Start a blog about organizational identity and weblogs. I am writing my master thesis and should export some wisdom to the net.

• Buy a DJ! A friend is coming from Barcelona, Marco Delvai, you can book him for little money and big fun! Expect more information later.

• A guide to MySpace – people keep asking me what to do there and I should write down all the things I tell each one of them.

And: A great mix at Miss Glitter – Bastard Cutz on bastard rec.

Downloadink

Comments about the propositions are open and welcome. Say something!

Systemtheoretiker und Konstruktivisten aufgepasst! Wenn wir die Welt nur durchs beobachten konstruieren (Matrix und so, vielleicht sind wir ja alle angeschlossen und keiner merkts, you know), dann ist das eine Beobachtung erster Ordnung, right? Wenn wir durch Medien wie TV oder Blogs die Welt beobachten, dann ist das wohl eine Beobachtung zweiter Ordnung.

Wenn Tita von Hardenberg, die eine eigene TV-Sendung hat, sich und Harald Schmidt mit der Kamera beobachtet und wir sie dann später auf ihrem Blog dabei beobachten, ja welche Beobachtungsordnung haben wir denn dann? Die Medien beobachten die Medien, wir beobachten die Medien und dabei die Welt und uns selbst. Mein Gott, als Systemtheoretiker muss man doch irgendwann wahnsinnig werden..
Continue >>

ERCO light design in Hong KongThe story I am about to tell is the perfect example of how narration, discourse and computer mediated communication via weblogs work together to tell us about the identity of an organization.

About 4 months ago, Cem Basman published an article about the transformation of the company ERCO from a dull bed stand lamp producer to a worldwinde innovator in lighting. A new manager asks his employees the significant question: “What business are we in, actually?”. “Lamps” was the first answer, and he said “no, it’s light”.
Continue >>

Photo by eanousa@FlickrDJ-Playlists are the currency of attention in the dance scene. People listen to the music in the club and in mixes, e.g. here, they read the titles and labels in magazines, emails and on websites. What scientists do with citations is the DJ-playlist in electronic music.

And it’s all there, there’s tons of playlists and charts on the internet and you can listen to many songs as snippets on Juno or the sites of the labels.

So, theoretically, you could put that together automatically, creating playlists with the corresponding links to the soundfiles, “playing playlists” so to say.
Continue >>

.. gestern habe ich über ihn geschrieben, heute lese ich, dass Gernot Wersig gestorben ist.

Bis zu allerletzt war er, so viel er konnte, am Institut, als brummig und sperrig war er bekannt, aber stets hat er sich für seine Studenten eingesetzt und den Fachbereich in schweren Zeiten am Leben erhalten.

“Wenn die systemtheoretische Beschreibung des Bohrens in der Nase bereits eine komplizierte strukturelle Koppelung verschiedener autopoietischer Systeme erfordert, ist dies letztlich nicht mehr operationalisierbar.” Gerade hier gelesen. Finde ich super. Von Gernot Wersig.

The International Communication Association host its 56th Annual Conference in Dresden these days. Too bad, I can’t be there, alone the idea of being in the same room with so many great theorists like Habermas and Castells would have been a great honour. The program is huge, let alone the overview is 21 pages.

I searched it for the keyword ‘identity’ and not surprisingly most of the contributions I found deal with ethnicity, culture and society. Constructing identities appear, twice linked with organization, once even within networks, a subject I have been working on before.

Identity and the internet is discussed on the matter of identification, but:
Constructing organizational identities with weblogs – that’s new, I am proud. Hope, I can do something really innovative here.

There is a fundamental discrepancy between the architecture of a browser and the way most people use the internet: The history of all browsers works linear, but our behaviour is not. Merely, it is three-dimensional. Software-development should take this into consideration.
Continue >>

If you are interested in what my master-thesis in communication will be about, click the thumbnail and you’ll see a mindmap.

In the map, I tried to combine all the theories I would like to discuss in the thesis. From organizational theories (e.g. Max Weber, Mintzberg) to the discussion about formal and informal structures of organizations, psychoanlytical organization theory (starts with Freud, happ 150th, anyway!), organizational culture and to my core object: organizational identity. (Albert & Whetten wrote a lot about it)
Continue >>

If you ever tried to control Ableton Live and maybe some synth and effects with a mouse, you will know that there’s much to improve in terms of usabilty. Laptop-musicians dream of some hardware-controller solution that gives them buttons to trigger the sounds from their laptop, like samples, arrangements, effects and so on.

Now here is one fascination toy: Monome40h. It consists of 8×8 touchpads that are programmable via an open-source controlling routine which turns them into keys, radio groupings, virtual sliders, etc., to communicate with ableton live, reason, cubase, logic and alike. To read more and watch a video Continue >>

This is about an amazing book I read recently. I am annoying my friends talking so much about it and I use its stories at work.

It is called “The tipping point” by Malcom Gladwell.

It’s not an insider’s tip, especially not in the U.S. and already has had quite an aftermath. Libraries, e.g. were rewarded for new ideas that had spread from the book.
Continue >>

It’s the second day of the “tradeshow for selected brands” here in Barcelona and I think it is a big success. It is sunny and warm, people carry their coats in their hands and I know that 30 000 new people in their database make the organizers happy. A busy murmuring is in the air and the fashion people seem not to be too impressed by each others style.

Big sunglasses, baggy jeans that look vintage but cost a fortune, suits that do not look like suits and surprisingly similar haircuts are the visitors trademarks. Although those people deal with selected brands and individuality in general, they look astonishingly alike. It’s a very focused scene: There are the buyers for fashion stores and chains, independent designers who produce for their own little brands and also the big corporate machine players with their inescapable position terms like chief of marketing, brand manager or creative director. And they are all in the database..

Continue >>

Nach dem Vorbild des Online-Filmmarketing-Beitrags stelle ich auch die in vor kurzem fertiggestellte Hausarbeit mit dem Thema “Edutainment – Wie Computerspiele das Lernen unterstützen können” online (Das Bild stammt vom NRW Kulturserver).

Es geht zuächst ganz grundsätzlich um das Verhältnis von Lernen und Spielen, um Kategorisierungen von Computerspielen und den Stand der Wirkungsforschung. Schließlich um kontemporäre Ansätze zum Einsatz von Computerspielen als Lernumgebungen und Chancen für die Zukunft. Im folgenden das Inhaltsverzeichnis, hier die html- und die pdf-Version.

In diesem Rahmen möchte ich mich auch mal ganz deutlich gegen diese furchtbaren Hausarbeit-Verticker wenden. Nicht nur, dass viele mit ziemlich unseriösen Mitteln á la Dialer etc arbeiten, den gesamten Ansatz finde ich zum kotzen. Das Studieren in Deutschland ist immer noch kostenlos, Diplomarbeiten müssen in öffentlichen Bibliotheken stehen und trotzdem findet es das Gros der Studenten ziemlich in Ordnung, ihre stinklangweiligen Ergüsse verkaufen zu wollen.

Wissenschaft muss meiner Meinungs nach offen zugänglich sein und als Student muss man der Almende etwas von dem zurückgeben, das man über die Jahre von ihr bekommen hat: das Wissen. Daher geht mein Dank raus an alle, die ihre Arbeit frei zu Verfügung stellen, insbesondere an Kurt Squire und Marian Dörk.
Continue >>

Ganz schön fortschrittlich, die Katalanen. Habe heute das Institut für die Erforschung künstlicher Intelligenz entdeckt. Nicht schlecht, da kommt man aber nur mit Chipkarte rein. Und raus. Ist wahrscheinlich auch gut, dass die künstliche Intelligenz nicht einfach abhaut und dann die Weltherrschaft übernimmt..

Ganz im Gegensatz dazu die letzten Eindrücke, die ich von der FU Berlin mitgenommen habe. Eine liebevolle und professionelle Baustellenabsperrung in Lankwitz, Institut für Publizistik und Kommunikationswissenschaften:

Auf der anderen Seite: Wer sich hier durchgeschlagen hat, der ist gehärtet für die Anforderungen des Lebens. Es gibt übrigens auch ein schönes Blog dort: Publizistik in Berlin. Und auch die haben eine launige Geschichte zum Chaos am Institut, dem man nur mit einer gehörigen Portion Gleichmut und Glück entgegen treten kann. Anyway, ich habe es jedenfalls fast geschafft und es nie bereut, dort studiert zu haben (um mal einen versöhnlichen Abschluss zu finden..)

I am mittendrin in preparing my time in Barcelona. Still looking for a flat, leere Kartons, die darauf warten gefüllt und dann in einen Container verpackt zu werden, Adieu sagen, Platten mitnehmen oder nicht, and so on.
My biggest concern is a Hausarbeit I have to finish until Montag: “Edutainment: Lernen mit Computerspielen.” Quite an interesting subject you will find a lot about on the internet. Works, papers, surveys, articles, examples.. So I´ll just post some links about edutainment, games, learning and so on, some in Deutsch und some in English:

Overview on articles, examples, papers: Video games in education
Medienpädagogik Online von der Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung
Educational Computer Games in Wikipedia
Zavatar – eine Suchmaschine über Unterhaltungssoftware in Deutschland
Kurt Squire, expert on games and education at the MIT

“Marketing ist für Filme unverzichtbar und umfasst bei großen Produktionen inzwischen die Hälfte der Kosten. Mund–Propaganda hat einen hohen Einfluss auf die Entscheidung einen Film zu sehen, die Blockbuster-Strategie versucht (mit schwankendem Erfolg) diesem Einfluss zu entkommen.”

Welchen Stellenwert und welche Formen Mundpropaganda für Filme im Internet annehmen, ob und wie man sie beeinflussen kann und welche weiteren Marketinginstrumente es für das Onlinemarketing für Kinofilme gibt, habe ich in gegebener Kürze in einer Hausarbeit mit dem Thema “Das Internet als Filmmarketingtool” zeigen dürfen. Ich finde, sie ist ganz gut gelungen, eben eine Hausarbeit, nicht mehr und nicht weniger. Abgegeben an der FU Berlin, Publizistik und Kommunikationswissenschaft, Medienökonomie bei Prof. Goldhammer, Seminar “Situation der deutschen Filmwirtschaft”.

Im Folgenden gibt es das Fazit, Inhaltsverzeichnis, die Pdf- und die HTML-Version.
Continue >>

A flash movie about social software, personal publishing, automated recommendations, your own life being part of the media landscape, etc
The past and the future (very visionary) of the web, the news, the individual and the memories.

8 Minutes (send by Ele – warum hat die kein Weblog?).
I am flashed..

Book CoverWww.meinungsmacherblog.de is the blog I set up for the book I contributed to: “Die neuen Meinungsmacher – Weblogs als Herausforderung für Kampagne, Marketing, PR und Medien” by Dr. Ansgar Zerfaß und Dietrich Boelter, published by Nausner&Nausner. Comes out September 2005, 192 pages, ISBN 3-901402-45-4, 12 € (that’s cheap for so much science!).

Social Software, Corporate Weblogs, Corporate Communications, Agenda Setting, Opinion leaders, podcasts, media-for-the-masses, bloggings vs journalism and so on are the buzzwords.

All the science basically is by Dr. Zerfaß, case studies and the business part by Mr Boelter and my part was mainly to surf the web and find interesting stories and to write them down neatly. A lot of work but at last a lot of fun, too. You should read (if you read German) it is really interesting.

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