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Catching up - GOR 05 conference in Zurich
I came to Zurich on Sunday morning and Raph was waiting for me at the airport. It was really nice to see her again. We had loads of stuff to catch up so we kept chatting and chatting and chatting. We did a lot of work (I was still working on my presentation, she was preparing her lessons for her Monday classes) and a bit of walking around.
Monday: In the morning, Raphaela went to work and I worked a bit more, too. In the afternoon, we took a walk thru the city and visited few shops. We were meeting Vesna and Katja at about 3 pm. The nicest coincidence happened when I ran into Vesna immediately when entering a specific shop we both like;). So we waited for Katja, had some quick lunch and did some more walking around. And, me and Raph finally got to buy our sleeping masks so we eagerly tried them on when going to bed after some relaxation with SATC.
Tuesday: The first conference day. I got to registration desk and again ran into Katja and Vesna (good, we didn’t have to phone). After a keynote speaker, I went to listen the session on The Social use of Weblogs. It was really interesting, with five presenters. First one being was Martin Welker, who talked about The journalist’s use of blogs. In the beginning he presented some statistics, like that there are much more blog readers than blog writers, that in Germany, 65% of internet users don’t know what blog is, that only 3% of German users are actually writing blogs and that 80% of blogs terminate after one month or so. He posed some provoking questions like: Are mass media and gate keepers losing their power over publishing? The most frequently asked question Are bloggers journalists? This is quite unproductive question and we rather need to ask: Are journalists using blogs for their reporting?
The second speaker Nicola Doring talked about moblogs. Most interesting! Moblogs are mobile blogs, short text and photos published from wireless mobile devices. She suggested to check out some links: http://bubus.ch, http://belly.textamerica.com (collective moblog), http://stopbush.textamerica.com (political moblog) and a very creative http://www.09h09.com (the author uploads pictures of himself every morning at exactly 9.09 am). In 2004, 16% of mobile users use cam phones, and that influences on expansion of moblogs. Many mobloggers are also conventional bloggers. For searching thru moblogs we can use http://icerocket.com search engine. To sum up and make a distinction, moblogs are a form of communication about every day life, really small things, usually very personal things – some call it data garbage.
To be continued later …
By Nana | March 31, 2005 | Topics: Conferences, Les Voyages |