Barb Dybwad is the Associate Editor of Weblogs Inc.(WINC), one of the largest and most succesful blog-networks online.   Recently purchased by AOL, Weblogs Inc. includes blogs on a wide array of topics - from consumer electronics and video games to parenting, cancer and diabetes.  Barb writes primarily on the network's Social Software Weblog where she covers new web tools and the issues that surround them. 

I interviewed Barb by instant messaging and we talked about a lot of different subjects.  Below is that interview, reproduced largely in the form it was born in and illustrated by photos that Barb has taken and uploaded to the photosharing site Flickr.

Because some topics of the discussion were more technical than others, I'm going to organize a table of contents in a "tag cloud" style.  The subject headings below in the largest text are the least technical and most readable, the smallest text is for the titles of the most technical subjects of conversation.  You can click on any of these section titles to skip to that section, your browser's back arrow will return you to this point in the write-up.  Two introductory questions follow the tag cloud.

Introduction

Marshall
How did you get interested in social software?

Barb: I started down the path back when i worked at Cornell and no one else wanted to build our department website.
So i taught myself web development and eventually left CU to do freelance work and, while procrastinating on jobs for clients, got into blogging :)

which opened the doors to this whole new idea i think is still very revolutionary -- the idea that anyone can promote their ideas and their creations to a worldwide audience without having to get anyone else's approval

Marshall
So that means blogs, photo, video sharing?

Barb:  Yep, i got into blogs and wikis shortly thereafter -- then i got my first cameraphone which got me into Flickr, which is really when I knew this was something i wanted to go deep into

Flickr Photosharing

Marshall
What does flickr do for you?  for other people?  what kind of potential does it have - and what kinds of things are already happening with it?  

Barb:
flickr was one of the first companies that "got" what great social software should be -- a flexible framework in which the people who use it and love it are what make it great, and in which the user's creativity is encouraged in the process as opposed to Friendster who adopted the "we made this tool for you to use a certain way" model, flickr said "we made this tool and we don't really know how you will use it... and that's what's cool about it"

Marshall
is flickr stable enough that you'd recommend organizations invest time and energy into using it?

Barb:
people are using it in unexpected ways -- pro photographers are showing off their wares, amateurs are getting feedback on a new hobby, everyday people are sharing photos with friends and family, people with cameraphones are using it as a reverse chronological photo journal, etc.

I think following the yahoo acquisition, it's safe to call flickr stable in the sense that it will be around for a while.  As i've argued elsewhere, it would be much better if it employed an open identity standard and if the user's investment of time and energy there were more portable but that's a broader issue for the social software/web 2.0 community to address.

Identity 2.0

Marshall
Any advice for social change organizations moving into the Identity 2.0 era?

Barb:
Identity 2.0 is still a very new concept -- it's hard because the identity folks don't seem to be talking to lay folks, and it's precisely the lay folks who need to demand open identity.  So, keep raising the issue, blog about it, and help folks who are "users" understand why open identity is good for them - because right now, no one's doing that.

i have a background as a developer and even i have a lot of trouble following the threads in the identity discussions right now.  the discourse needs to be brought down a notch.

Marshall
for folks just starting to pay attention to this issue, what's your recommended #1 place to look first or watch for summarized progress reports on the issue? who's a trusted source in this?

Barb:
kaliya hamlin is a good one http://www.kaliyasblogs.net/Iwoman/

there's a really great video by sxip's dick hardt that explains the concept of identity well --http://www.identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/

Application Dreams

Marshall
cool.  let's change pace.  what apps or types of aps are you most excited about right now?

Barb:
I'm excited about apps exploring attention and OPML right now, also collaborative document editing and management tools like writely, and "meta" building tools like ning although i think ning is just the very first wave

social news/social bookmarking is still interesting but sort of stagnant... i'm waiting for some paradigm shift in this space

Marshall
[aside] I'm waiting for Yahoo to save del.icio.us from tag intersection paralysis!

Barb:
what i would really love to see is someone make a knowledge management-type tool more gamelike, more social and more fun.  i'm praying yahoo figures out how to mashup my del.icio.us and my myweb :) hehe

but the thing is, i have all of these bookmarks and data and information i've stored...but i have no new and interesting tools to help me use that information. like, i have all this data -- great. what can i do with it?

why hasn't someone combined social bookmarking with blogging?

Marshall
flock isn't that?  or performancing?

Barb:
and combined that mashup with IM?

oh add performancing to my excited about list... it's cool :) i want an integrated solution with the bookmarking, though -- flock wants to go there but i don't think they're quite there yet.

i haven't tried the latest build, to be fair, though

like, why can't i narrow a search iteratively by tag?
it should be easier to find things and then alchemize them into some output

Marshall
like what kinds of output?  like RSS to HTML? or am I short on imagination here?

Barb:
or take a collection of bookmarks by dag, drag and drop them onto another set of bookmarks and see what overlaps
and then see which of my friends are blogging about those topics.

Marshall
count me in, that sounds great.  

Barb:
i mean something that will help my own brain process of taking the raw input of this information, jotting notes on it and making a blog post or an email or an IM or whatever format i need it in

Marshall: that seems way ahead of where things are at right now!

Barb: i know! that's why i'm a little bit frustrated right now ;)

Marshall
and yet it seems like AJAX makes that more possible than ever

Barb:
yes, cool things are happening with AJAX... but there are drawbacks too, like lack of state information, etc.

that is something that needs to be tackled

Marshall
state information?

Barb:
yeah so, for example, you may be able to do a complex action using AJAX but you probably won't be able to generate a URL that will link to any of those intermediate steps

Imagination Bubble

Marshall
will these visionary things be actualized you think
or is there an imagination bubble

just like the alleged financial bubble?

are you optimistic?

Barb:
i think the two are linked -- the financial bubble tends to be correlated with an imagination bubble because in order to be financially successful, businesspeople and investors want to piggyback on known quantities and methods that have worked before

which can be antithetical to innovation -- it's a continuum.  of course, the bigger payoffs are often for the radically new, but it requires a greater risk

Non Profit Adoption

Marshall
so... for a person or an organization that can see exciting things going on in this space, what would you advise looking into now and what should they sit back and wait for further development?

Barb:
definitely don't sit back and wait.  i can be a curmudgeon about it but ultimately i'm still an optimist --
 if it's a person/group really completely new to this space -- start a blog. that's square one.

then it depends on your goals and what you want to do... but one way for an individual to get started is to figure out and find some tools that help you out, personally -- improve your workflow, make things easier, help you more quickly connect with people and information you want to connect with

i am a big advocate of the "smorgasbord" approach -- try a little bit of everything and come back to the things that interest you/help you most

Building Visibility

Marshall
so Weblogs Inc. blogging is a lot about traffic generation, I know your people are contracted to write a certain number of posts periodically b/c of the connection between posting frequency and traffic.

what else would you suggest for making blogs sticky and increasing visibility/traffic?

for non profits in particular

Barb:
there's a lot of hype about building traffic in a sort of generic sense that i think borrows too much from our broadcast media past -- it's not as important anymore to generate huge numbers and there are more effective ways that especially small organizations can use --

use blog search tools to find other people and groups doing similar things, and connect with those people

find out what tags they use for concepts of relevance to your goals, and use those tags

blog about what you're doing and any news related to your goals/interests

comment on other folks' posts that are talking about the same things.  build relationships directly - contact those folks and find out how you can help each other, link to each other, work together.

Helping Readers Join the Blogosphere

Marshall
so that sounds like a good way to participate in a preexisting online community - invaluable advice for sure - any thoughts on writing to help non blog readers become blog readers?

Barb:
good question -- introduce them to RSS, get them an RSS reader and provide an OPML file on your blog of your own feed and sources you trust

Marshall
oh that's a nice idea for sure

Barb:
actively encourage them to participate in the discussions... it's sometimes difficult to explain the difference between broadcast media and participatory media but i feel that once people "get it," they really get it and dive into it in a big way

and "getting it" is often best done by doing it

Marshall
is the typical blog layout/structure going to work to get new readers engaged with intro resources like that?  any diversions from most standard practices in this sense that seem advisable in this stage of the game?

Barb:
one of the big things i tend to rant about blog format is that it makes it difficult to separate "most recent" from "best"

that's another thing i'm waiting for -- a way for those different "views" of content to coexist better

 on the other hand, i think there's a danger in focusing overly much on the technical side of the tools and forgetting that the content is what it's all about

even the word "content" grates on my nerves :)

Echo Chambers

Marshall
what does it mean to you to "write for the web" and is that different from "writing in the blogosphere?"  

Barb:
hmm another good question... that question to me brings up the concept of the echo chamber and the danger of a) preaching to the converted b) having a discussion that tends to get more narrow over time and c) doesn't reach out to people who are "outside" the blogosphere

i see a lot of that happening in the blogosphere

and i struggle with how to participate in it (it's my job...) and yet remain somehow outside of it so i can critique it

Marshall
and maintain sanity!

Barb:
hehe ideally! :)

i am definitely conscious of the split there and the struggle, and the human tendency to form these cliques...

i don't think it's something particular to the blogosphere
i think it's a human thing regardless of the framework it's in

but i definitely see it happening and want to promote movement in the opposite direction, towards inclusiveness and toward reaching out

Marshall
any specific advice on how to do that?

Barb:
i try to make sure that i'm not always reading the same people and using the same sources

one of the things i love about places like del.icio.us is that i can jump onto something random and discover a different universe to hang out in for a while

same thing with google

it's hard to remember that our time is limited and the choices we make to engage in one activity means less or no time spent elsewhere...

it's really a struggle to prioritize getting beyond the usual circles

but it's imperative to discover some mechanisms for doing so and making time for them... otherwise they tend not to happen

i use many of the social news/bookmarking sites for the serendipity factor... finding things i otherwise wouldn't have if i just used my RSS reader or just read mainstream news, etc.

i also incessantly use new tools... and am always looking for ways of breaking out of workflow habits that have formed around getting information in certain ways


Web 2.0, Race, Class and Gender

Marshall
do you want to share any thoughts on class/race/gender/age and Web 2.0?

Barb:
i think web 2.0 inherits the same set of problems from the tech industry in which it's situated...

 when you have all of these building blocks and criteria underneath being involved in the industry that foster/contain inequality, reaching a certain level of education, having certain connections or a certain base amount of wealth, for example -- you are going to have these problems because our country as a whole has not put forth the effort/resources to really deal with them

it doesn't mean there aren't minorities in the industry, etc. but the larger picture is that there is a great amount of inequality and a lack of diversity in the voices involved in this industry

and that generates a lack of diversity in the discussions and in the products themselves, ultimately it's another facet of the echo chamber

Marshall
what would it take for Web2.0 to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem?

Barb:
 the players involved in web 2.0 would have to make a conscious decision to change the way the game is played

people who are in positions of power to fund projects and to hire personnel would have to choose to stop taking the easy way out and hire people they're connected to in their circles

they would also have to choose to listen to voices and field questions coming from outside the usual suspects

the people who are really in those positions are making choices based on the pitches they are inundated with day in and day out -- it's the usual suspects who have access to them and it would require a conscious decision to solicit input from further afield to break out of the echo chamber

Marshall
that sounds like a great approach.

Barb:
unfortunately it's far more expedient to take what's already coming to you, which is why we are where we are :)

business values expediency because there's a short-term gain -- diversity is a long-term gain that's more difficult to measure

Pitching Bloggers to Cover Your Issue

Marshall
let's switch elsewhere-- pitching bloggers for promotion, especially non commercial promo: is it a good idea?

Barb:
 so you mean asking a blogger to link to your post on x, and that kind of thing

Marshall
or to cover your event or issue.

Barb:
i think it's certainly appropriate if you have good reason to believe they'd actually be interested in your issue, for sure

but if your event is about Habitat for Humanity and you ask Scoble to link to you because he's an a-list blogger... that's not so cool :)

it's not so different from how we interact in real life... you tell the people your news about topic x if you know they're into topic x, and you don't bother your other friends with it

also, don't take it personally if they don't end up linking to you... people get busy

but i think most reasonable folks would not be offended by this

Dealing With Information Overload

Marshall
ok, so: any tips on dealing with information overload?

Barb:
 there was a time not so long ago when i had time to read every email and when i could actually get through all of my handful of newsfeeds in one sitting... but at some point i had to let go of the idea of "completion"

now i think of my workflow process as "filtering"

and the goal is not to "finish" everything or process absolutely everything --

the goal is to figure out at a glance what's most important or most interesting and follow that first

some things of course still require completion but things like my RSS feeds... i can't beat myself over the head with guilt if i don't get through them

i have to look at is as all of these opportunities to learn something interesting and fun, and any one of the paths i choose become the right paths

so i try to look at it as bounty that i get to enjoy instead of a chore i have to wade through

attitude definitely helps! :)

Marshall
what are the best tools you've found to facilitate that filtering?

Barb:
i use gmail for email -- even though i want to kill its quirks and lack of robust functionality from time to time, i can't go back to POP

auto-filtering helps and then i just get used to seeing the # of unread messages slowly climb and force myself to stop worrying about it ;)

oh man, i could go on about gmail... so many things!

the whole tagging interface really sucketh.  it also tends to "lose" incoming and outgoing mail not infrequently

Marshall
for sure, but spam is no longer a problem is it?

Barb:
true, that is a blessing

although the flip side is i miss a lot of mails that get tossed into spam and aren't

Blog Networks

Barb: what i find the coolest part about blog networks is the people energy inside them...

it's a truly collaborative thing to assemble folks who are passionate in their areas of interest and have them work together

and it's definitely one of the best and most fun parts of my job

that social and collective aspect is more interesting and more powerful than the financial/revenue side of things, to me personally

Marshall
what is it that makes a blog network a network?  interlinking and weekly highlight posts like at WINC?  

Barb:
we don't do those weekly highlight posts anymore, thank god

well, one thing is that we have a ton of overlap on our blogs -- lots of people posting to multiple blogs and wearing many hats

and we have  internal email lists and a wiki and are communicating constantly via IM

so we're always staying aware of what other blogs are doing and often collaborating on stories where subject matter overlaps multiple blogs

and sending tips to each other

and giving props to each other, and sharing best practices, etc.

Marshall
do you think that model has potential in the non profit world?

Barb:
most definitely!!

absolutely, this would be a great model for something like a federated network of non-profit group sites... that would totally rock

Marshall
advice for anyone starting one?

Barb:
you'll need a designated tech person to make sure your servers stay up and everything is running smoothly -- don't scrimp on that, you'll regret it

pick a platform that's easy for everyone to use -- wordpress or something custom-built

have as many methods of intercommunication going on simultaneously as possible

email lists, a wiki or basecamp/writeboard type solution for collaboration, and preferably something real-time like IM or regular Skype calls or what have you

Marshall
that's great.  I hope some one does that

Barb:
me too, i would love to see that!

Conference Thoughts

Marshall
so, let me ask you about conferency matters.  The Net Squared conference is all about bringing tech companies, early adopters and non profits together to help the non profits do their work better.  anything from your conference going that you think is essential for a good conference in general?

Barb:
one thing that bugs me about tech conferences is there's too much prepared stuff and not enough downtime

even at dinners there are presentations and so on

it would be great if there were more chill time or semi-optional time for people to just hang out and meet each other

like, i think about the difference between the experiences i had at State of Play versus Tag Camp...

which is about as structured versus unstructured as you can get

there were structures things at tag camp but i had much more fun on friday night just staying up late and chatting with everyone

Marshall
“state of play” was more structured?

Barb:
oh, definitely, all formal presentations and small group sessions

we did have some hangout time but it seemed very hurried

Marshall
so this conference is going to have both high tech and not so high tech folks.  any thoughts on how to make that work best?

it's also going to have some big orgs and some little ones

Barb:
that will be fascinating :)

 somehow there will have to be fostered a spirit of openness such that the non-tech folks aren't intimidated by the tech folks and feel very free to ask a lot of questions

and the tech folks will have to be encouraged to not rattle off a bunch of techspeak :)

and there should be mechanisms to get the two groups to actually intermingle instead of grouping up in the same old cliques

like... my friend danah was telling me about how they played Werewolf at Foo Camp and that was a great icebreaker --

assembling groups somewhat randomly and having them get together through some somewhat arbitrary activity that is just fun

Marshall
have you seen anything in particular that helps lower the intimidation level for new folks?

Barb:
at Blogher the organizers did a good job of setting the tone at the first session -- laying out the framework for the atmosphere of openness that was to be expected

they had everyone in the same room for the opening and laid that out so everyone knew it was encouraged for them to speak up on whatever was on their mind

sometimes things like the mechanics of room layout can help... instead of having a typical speaker/podium audience facing them arrangement, if there will be smaller sessions or big enough rooms to allow everyone to face each other...

or other ways of changing up the dynamic so it's not just the same old "one person talks and everyone listens (or doesn't...)"