What's up doc? Blog Training Day - Attending May 12th - Birmingham

I'm delighted to have been accepted for this event, and looking forward to going on May 12th. It's a good opportunity for me.

I'll include the details below -

"Blog Training Day - a few places still left!

12 May 2011, Birmingham

'What's up doc?' is a new blog which provides a forum for postgraduate researchers to share experience, give information and tips on matters relevant to them in a fun, yet informed way.

As part of the launch we will run a free blog training day in Birmingham on 12 May. Apart from learning what makes a good blog post, we will also explore how to increase your online profile. To apply:

post an example of an article on the
'What's up doc?' blog
send an email outlining why you want to be involved, what discipline your research is in and what you would do to champion 'What's up doc?' to tennie.videler@vitae.ac.uk before 9 May.
We will select applicants based on this and reimburse reasonable travel expenses. Places are limited.

http://www.vitae.ac.uk/whatsupdoc"

What's up doc? Join the blog for postgraduate researchers - My case for an invite

This relates to my previous post of April 7th about the research blogging event in Birmingham next month. I've posted to their blog and emailed them to make my case for inclusion. This is my post to their 'What's up doc?' blog - Postgraduate Conference for Computing: Applications and Theory (PCCAT 2011). The post itself is about a different event, a computing Conference at Exeter University and the abstract of my paper for that.

Social Media - Interesting BBC articles - Social Media, Future and Egypt Protests

For my 200th blog post I was inspired to write by reading of 2 BBC articles. One is about the role of Social Media in the Tunisian and Egypt Protests.

Internet role in Egypt's protests - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12400319. - 9 February 2011 Last updated at 06:00 - By Anne Alexander - University of Cambridge.

This article discusses the way Social Media acted as an aid to organisation of the protests, and that this worked in conjunction with ways of spreading the word and existing organisations. The Egyptian Governments shutting down of the internet was not successful because these other ways of organising were already established through a mixture of word of mouth and Social Media

The other article is about the future of Social Media, and the other about the future of friends: Who can topple Facebook? - http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2011/02/the_future_of_friends_-_who_ca.html - Rory Cellan-Jones 08:00 UK time, Wednesday, 9 February 2011.

This article also mentions the radio 4 program on this subject, which is available at - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00y8xdv, with links to the previous 2 episodes. The article argues whether Facebooks dominance is likely to continue or whether new competitors will challenge this.