!about blogtalk
Back then in the summer of 2002, I remember, I had a certain feeling or better a certainty that emerged out of a very simple but effective daily practice and experience. After only 3 months of using a piece of software that was built to create a weblog I knew that the network I tapped into is going to change my view of the world that I live in. At that time I was heading the Center for New Media at the Danube University of Krems and somehow peripherally, partly due to my job description, I was drawn into that enormous learning network. It started off as a simple practice of collecting links to sources on the web thus becoming an information-filter for others. Within a couple of weeks I became part of a network of like-minded people on a global scale. Via reading their blogs - via RSS - I started participating in an ongoing chat that dealt with all the topics I was interested in from my professional point of view. This conversational style increased or even sparked off my daily dose of learning. I never learned that much before. And I still do that. Not only do I learn on a factual level but I also get to know the people that are closely linked to this pieces of microcontent that are published all across the world and - at least for me - interwoven via RSS.
After 2 months of usage that certainty made it evident for me that with blogs and the related networks we do have a very powerful personal publishing tool available that will augment our personal scope of networking as a base for learning enourmously. I was quite certain that this will not only effect the private usage but even more the organizational usage of it. Since then I am most interested in transfering the lessons learned in the open web into the professional and organizational context.
So in 2002 after a brief introspection I decided to organize a conference on that topic and together with Max Scheugl the first draft of BlogTalk - the first international conference on weblogs - was created. It turned out to be a huge success and had a successor in 2004, thanks to Markus Toyfl for helping to design it, and eventually turned for its third edition - that was conceived and organized together with Jan Schmidt - into a more general conference on social software - a practice and phenomenon that took shape already in late 2002.