Roland and I are hanging out at my parents' place on Bowen Island after giving a 4 hour training session this morning - an Intro to Blogging. We had a small group join us at the Bowen Island Community School (BICS) in the computer lab, and Roland and I rolled on through the growing description of blogging, photo sharing on Flickr, and how content flows all around.
It was great finally meeting Dr. Richard Smith in person -- he took the picture of Roland and Clarice at left. Looking forward to working more on some local Vancouver projects we've got brewing.
We had a mix of comfort levels with computers and the Internet, as well as different reasons for wanting to learn more about blogging. Flickr was a big hit, and to some was all the blogging they needed. We also set people up with Wordpress.com accounts, and even set up the Flickr -> post to Wordpress settings.
The biggest conceptual stumbling block was "What is the difference between a website and a blog?". The answer, other than a blog being usually a lot easier to update, is that there is no difference.
The hardest part of the hands on section was dealing with usernames and passwords. In short, identity. When we described some of the solutions being developed in this area, people instinctively wanted them NOW. Going through the sign up of Flickr through Yahoo was difficult, and then having to fill out a lot of the same information again in the Flickr profile was extra annoying.
I was also very much reminded of Michael Fergusson's recent interview with a late adopter. But, I don't think we're at the late adopter phase. We're barely pushing out of early adopter phase, although people are super excited by the power and flexibility that easy to edit blogs and photo sharing are giving them. I'm feeling energized and excited about continue to work in this space, listen to and learn what people want, and just plain connect and communicate.
(Roland as usual has beat me to it and already posted notes)