XpDayAggregator

What's an XpDayAggregator?

A webpage on the XtC website that aggregates the blogs of various attendees to XpDay. The idea was inspired by sites like http://www.go-mono.com/monologue/ and http://www.planetapache.org/ which aggregate the blogs of a group of people who have something in common.

What would be involved?

• Some mechanism for people to volunteer their blog for aggregation during the conference.
• • This could be as simple as telling some person at an XtC meeting the url for your blog.

• Some piece of technology that runs every few hours and displays a page of everybody's blog entries in chronological order.
• • This could be as simple as a CGI script that stores the entries in a text file.
  • We could always reuse the PlanetPlanet tool which was designed for precisely this usecase.

--AdewaleOshineye

You know, it seems almost as if a conference where anyone has the idle time to fill in a blog while they are at the conference is a failure.

I saw blogging going on during a couple of sessions at OT2004 and it struck me that 1) the blogger was having to divide his attention between typing and being involved in the sessions where he was, in a way that wasn't helpful, and 2) the presence of an individual hidden behind a laptop screen, head down and typing, was quite a distraction for other attendees, especially in the sorts of group activities that are common at OT (and XP day).

The blog posts that arose from this were of a curious sort, consisting often of opinions about the activity, rather than descriptions of it, suggesting that the blogger was acting as a critic of (in the constructive sense) rather than as a participant in the event they were attending. I'm put in mind of those tourists that wander thorugh scenes with their eyes glued to the display of a recording device, rather than engaging with the place they are in, their every experience a mediated one, rather than an authentic one.

Added to which I don't have a high regard for blogs as a form, or boggers as a "community". Masturbation is an excellent pass-time, but only in the rarest circumstances does it make a satisfactory spectator sport. As for the mutual masturbation by ugly people that constitutes the blogosphere... --KeithB

That's one word picture I wish I didn't have. Cheer up Keith. Blogging isn't that bad ;-) ^DafyddRees

As an infrequent blog-reader (I don't blog myself). I find some blogs quite interesting particuarly when you can leave feedback. People often write things in blogs that they might not say in real life - this sometimes makes them quite interesting and insightful. I think blogging actually during a session sounds quite rude though. I wonder if anyone has created a Blog-Wiki hybrid i've often felt wiki userpages would be better if they were in a blog format -as many people use them for this anyway. MpC

It might be nice to exclude the rubbish in RecentChanges though, I'll check the latest JSPWiki.