It’s Simon using Sandy’s account Cormac, keeping the spam generated from Wiki****’s mailing lists on another machine. Just setting up another account to use in future.

 

Saw your name and paper pop up.

The name here http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn/openlearn2007/programme.php

Your paper here. http://kn.open.ac.uk/public/workspace.cfm?wpid=7984  Very good. OpenLearn has been one home (page) to me for its one year. I’m jealous of your attendance, and a few others. The problem for Openlearn’s, as it is for Wikipedia’s, many conferences is that they forego any attempt to include the majority of openlearners and wikimedians, which would be OK if useful tools = the (baby) Global IP utilities = weren’t so bleedin’ obvious. Like forums or http://www.vrvs.org/Documentation/faq.html

 

The openlearn sponsorship, you will find, has legs due to HP being its main sponsor ($5M for three years I think). You would be aware HP has scattered its pennies on these waters as well. http://ocwconsortium.org/about/index.shtml I think they would be interested in sponsoring another global foundation’s talkative communities; particularly if their members’ primary aim was to link between global sites and, at “their” conferences, do something like an academic Euro song contest.

 

It seems to be becoming more obvious to many virtual communities. Mail lists generate spam. (No? Gary) Their “border conversations” (threads) are hard to find, follow, and aggregate. They are invariably lost over time and through ‘reclassification’. In an online forum it’s the exact opposite. I point out this one to the ComProj improvement committee  http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-threads.cfm?f=35 You can see its moderators moving (or deleting) inquirers to the appropriate forum (virtual room).

 

If we could get the old email approach to personal communication above the radar = onto a few more interactive screens, in a more understandable format, in real time as well as asynchronous. This sponsorship thread runs into a few quiet conversations with an (smaller, global) ISP at this end. They partner with HP (and a few other big names) already. I’ll look forward to your opinion of the OU pow wow. Regards.