I had a crazy, but wonderful period. I attended, one after the other:
– the I-KNOW ’04 conference in Graz, Austria (30 June-2 July)
– BlogWalk3 in Vienna (4 July)
– BlogTalk 2.0 also in Vienna (5-6 July)
– the PACE project meeting in Santiago de Compostella (8-9 July).
During all this time, what was happening around me was much too important to let me time for breath. I didn’t dare to blog, even if I was given all the chances to do it! I guess I wanted to experience everything at full intensity, even if in my head, I was blogging all the time!
I arrived back to Luxembourg three weeks ago, in an empty apartment, realising that my electricity and gas were cut off in my absence. Back on Earth!
It felt like I arrived here for the first time: it was a continuous struggle with the bureaucracy to get accepted and find my place here. Then I had to register to several other authorities, to move all my stuff from Germany over here, to buy basic furniture…
No that this was done and I found my peace again, I think I can go back to blogging.
I felt bad all this period about deserting my blog, and I made great efforts to come back. Then I read Bloggers suffer burnout in Wired and I thought maybe the same happened to me: I’m done!
Two days later, I discovered Nancy White‘s post about trying to catch up, and I felt a bit better.
Probably I will never suceed to catch up, even if there are so many things about these past events I would like to talk about. But why not start again now, and see what happens afterwards?
During BlogWalk3, I had few apparently neutral talks that made me reflect on my blogging. First, speaking in a group about my thoughts being spread throughout several blogs, Elmine told me she considered blogging about my personal life only in Romanian unfair. She argued that people reading Coniecto can only perceive one of my facets and are prevented from knowing me better. Then, speaking about my passion for astrology and sharing pros and cons during lunch with JJ Merelo and Fernando Tricas, JJ asked me: Do you blog about this? And I said yes, often, but only in my personal blog I keep in Romanian(which is a mixture of links, quotations and stories about myself).
Doubt was already planted in my head. By trying to keep my personal life out of my so-called professional blog, I made it sound false. I missed a voice. OK, people were able to guess a lot about me just by looking at the kind of things I usually post. But I think Elmine was right: this is not fair! A sort of gap developed between me and my own blog, keeping me from writing when I was mad and sad. I think I am ready to accept now that this is me, and there’s no use to hide that I have doubts, fears and preferences, just like any other human being!
So, back on track, trying to put my “fractured” personality together right here, in what was meant to be a serious, strictly professional weblog.
After reading yesterday Olaf Brugman’s serie of posts about the spiritist perspective on social development and knowledge management and finding it really interesting, I feel a lot better about thinking of studying the possible influence of stars on people’s inclination to blog.
Blogs can foster our weirdest ideas, serendipity arises on the edge (I read this few days ago in a blog, but I can’t find my bookmarks anymore), so why not?
August 06 2004 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
BlogTalk2 is ready to start. Yesterday, we had a very interesting BlogWalk3.
I’m looking forward to writing more about this- probably on the train tomorrow!
Now, BT2 just started!
July 05 2004 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
I am terribly frustrated because I was kept off line for the last 4 days!
Because of some bureaucratic problems, I couldn’t get neither a computer, nor an Internet connection for my laptop after my arrival in Luxembourg.
And there were so many thing to tell about BlogWalk2!
I think it was a great event, and even if there are not yet any visible results, the seeds were planted…
As Sebastian said when we left the room in the evening to go to dinner, it is not done yet! The participants continue to digest deas, to strengthen links, to draw future plans together.
On my way back from Nürnberg to Kaiserslautern, I switched on my laptop and started to make notes for future posts. I couldn’t wait till I got home. I was excited and enchanted at the same time. Unfortunately, immediately after my arrival, I had to start packing and to move. I hope I will find soon some time to develop and post those notes.
They were made on Saturday afternoon, immediately after a talk with Ton, Elmine, Lilia and Sebastian about not taking any notes during the BlogWalk. Even if I am a notes-addict, I felt that taking notes during BlogWalk could interrupt the flow of thoughts and talks. I was expressing my opinion that each of the participants will start publishing ideas and thoughts, and we will be able to recall the magic from this thoughts-web. And the response was: “What if all of them will wait for the others to start?!” More or less, this is what happens now. I think most of us are postponing the posting of our thoughts, because of some degree of fuzziness that persists. The meeting was so dense, so rewarding, so exciting that expressing all what happened in words is extremely difficult!
Yesterday, I read a message from my former colleague Eric, regarding his impressions. I hope he won’t mind if I’ll quote him here, since he doesn’t have a public blog yet (even if he maintains an excellent blog on the Institute’s Intranet!):
“I found BlogWalk2 amazing! This proves that people can meet informally and though have an enormous exchange of information. It was impossible to loosen your attention, because you were constantly animated and participating.”
To conclude this post, I found BlogWalk2 a great event, because:
– I had the chance to meet very interesting people and to talk to some of them
– A lot of ideas on personal development and weblogs were issued
– Thomas served me a better name for the “Weblogging Model”: “The Blogging Metaphor”
– I discovered the beautiful Nürnberg by walking and talking about blogs with bloggers, which made it unforgetable
– it was the most relaxing workday I’ve had in months!
Thank you, Sebastian, for organizing the event, and thank you, Ton, for moderating!
Thanks to everyone for being there and making it possible!
More to come…
June 04 2004 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tough week! I didn’t have the time to blog anymore, even if I was thinking almost all the time: I should blog this! or that!
First, I succeeded to send a paper to TICE 2004 on Weblogging as a Model for Individual and Organisational Learning . That was last week.
And then I had to work hard for preparing my module on Knowledge and Organization to be taught at the CNAM in Paris next week. Well, it’s almost done. I plan to start a new weblog for interacting with the students.
Aren’t they too many? I think I should be more focused. Writing so many blogs could be distracting and confusing. But also helpful – I can separate the different parts of my work.
Now we have to finish the paper accepted at the ECKM 04, which is also hosted by the CNAM. And I have another paper on Knowledge Based Systems pending. A lot of work, and my time in Germany is getting shorter and shorter. I will have to move to Luxemburg next month, for the second part of my fellowship. A new begining, new topics, new people…
May 10 2004 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
It’s really hard to catch up after such a long absence. Especially because of too many events, too many thoughts, too many comments on other’s ideas…
The first thing I would like to blog about is how frustrated I was not being able to attend the BlogWalk 1.0 in Enschede due to my health problems. And in the mean time how fortunate I felt having the chance to read so many things about it in the participants’ weblogs!
From Lilia Efimova’s announcement that it has started, through Ton Zylstra‘s description of the first day, Martin Roell’s concentrated and well-illustrated post, to the BlogWalk further thoughts of Andy Boyd, these posts enabled me to get the great picture, even if I wasn’t there.
The interesting discussion I had with Martin in Mannheim on his way back from Enschede gave a special flavour to the information I was able to get from the Net. I was curious to find out what was all about, and Martin mentioned some of the topics – personal weblogs compared to group weblogs, internal versus external blogs, and how they can be useful for learning, thinking and discussing with other people interested in the same topics. We also had the chance to compare our experiences in doing presentations on weblogs, to talk about each one’s topic for BlogTalk 2.0 – and of course about the bad habit of sending proposals in the very last minute!
By the way, I still due an explanation about my proposal, I finished it at 3:00 am before leaving, and then I wrote the previous post. I am sure I included a link pointing to my ideas, but as I lost the post three times before publishing it, it looks like I omitted this the last time!
April 01 2004 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
I was trying to return to Curioser and curioser on which I read a post few minutes ago.
Accidentally, I picked up a wrong URL in my IE address bar, and I retrieved a post from a blog I read several days ago.
It was The journey from WIIFM to WOMII from Viral-learning.net. Few hours before, we had a meeting where we were talking about motivations for learning in a CoP. Was this an answer to my questions? It looks like!
Anyhow, I browsed Viral-learning.net few days ago and I forgot to bookmark it. Does anything happen by hazard? Or can we influence the way things happen? And OT, what comes into my mind is the introductory scene of Stalker by Tarkovski, where the redhaired little girl pushes a glass of water off the table just by looking at it.
March 02 2004 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
I’m a bit nervous. This is really going to be my own blog!
I’m not quite a newbie. I started and maintain 6 other blogs by now. But none of them is really mine! They are project weblogs, community weblogs, paper writing weblogs…all kind of!
I’ve been thinking of this moment for quite a long time. Last year, at BlogTalk, I was just dreaming of it.
Why did it take so long? Well, I wanted to walk this country a bit, to quote jill.
I tried a bit of TypePad, a little bit of Radio, and here I am back at the good old Blogger. New friends are great, but you always can rely on the old ones.
I started to laugh when, few days ago, a colleague called me blog expert. I am not an expert at all, but I am fond of weblogs, and it looks like I’m so enthusiastic that it becomes contagious!
Lilia Efimova is perfectly right when she speeks about making your own luck. Who would have thought few months ago that my interest for blogs could be turned into a very serious research topic? And here I am!
February 18 2004 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
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