Growing the Conversation

June 8, 2009

You’ll remember last week I made a call for recommendations of blogs to include in a blogroll here. The idea was to start developing sort of a core set of common references so we’re all be ‘starting on the same page’ in our conversations.

You’ll see there’s now a Blogger-style blogroll on the far right that automatically updates via Google’s AJAX feed API (more blogroll plugins here). I’m a big fan of showing the most recent posts because, beyond giving the site itself a more dynamic and engaging feel, it promotes the brainstorming aspect of this project. I’ve already clicked on a few article links that caught my eye as I was setting it up.

LdnBeta’s mission is specifically to stir digital innovation and engagement in London Ontario’s civic and social spheres, but that encompasses a lot of different fields. Everyone will have their own favourites within their niche (which we’re all promoting on our own blogs already — let’s hope) but there also has to be a significant amount of general knowledge shared among developers & designers, visionaries & activists, administrators, practitioners & executives etc in common.

[Is there something essential from your field you think we should know about? Tell us about it in the comments!]

There’s a time and a place for focusing on a speciality, and there’s a time and a place for dialog between specialists and generalists alike. This happens to be a venue for the latter. Titus nailed it earlier on:

Here is how I what Ldn Beta to evolve; It’s a resource, it’s a community meeting place, it’s a sounding board, and an ideas blog. All told it should encourage people to tap into the social aspect of the web and how that effects everyone here in London. It should serve as encouragement that we can effect positive change in the city, and we can do that through collaboration.

So in light of that, I thought of doing something a little ironic (for now): I decided not to include London blogs in the blogroll.

The first reason is that I just didn’t know exactly where to draw the line — which London blogs deserve to be featured and which ones don’t? Last time I counted I had 101 London blogs in Google Reader (shared here, also check out Bill’s Delicious links and London blog mashup here and here) and lately I’ve been adding at least one more every day or two. When there’s that many it defeats the purpose.

It’s open for dialog (as everything is here) but the best way to draw the line would be to only include those blog(ger)s that are active in the discussion. My next thought was, well, in that case, why not just say the comments are the blogroll.

So I finally got around to setting up Disqus, which should also open up opportunities to proliferate the discussion to/from other places. The last post grabbed some reactions from Twitter, and you can comment under your Facebook or Twitter profile with the option of having your comments automatically show up in your stream on either of those platforms.

Anyways, work in progress. We’ll try it for now and keep changing as more fun apps and stuff get developed.

[Also, almost forgot: I changed the license from Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike to the more open Attribution license -- which is more consistent with the spirit of things here... Another change I made was to the permalinks, which doesn't seem to have had any adverse effects.]

[Something else too: along with the idea that "the comments are the blogroll" there's still room to highlight other London initiatives like BlogLDN, 1 Love London, and London Photo Walk. Any creative ideas?]