Six Continents and Between

Social Networking

Back in Edmonton, a few comments on the social networking aspect of this project:

I set up a Facebook page, which allows people to become friends. This was then changed to a Facebook site, which is better because people become ‘fans’ rather than ‘friends’. The goal of the site was to generate conversation among Slovaks, mostly living in Bratislava or Slovakia, that would contribute to my understanding of ‘pop print’ as it pertained to the Bratislava/Slovak environment. This was difficult for me as I am not inclined to use Facebook for personal reasons and since I was not using Facebook previously the whole thing had to be started from scratch, with 0 friends or fans. My wife was able to provide pseudo fans through her Slovak contacts to boost numbers. However, critical mass was never reached. That being said, there was some very valuable discussion and information gathered. Ideally, this site would have been started much earlier, and perhaps with less emphasis on the project and more on print, books, what’s cool, what’s not, etc. I think it would be easier to engage people when there is nothing at stake, no project emphasis. Friends want to help with such things, but fans perhaps just want to come and go and not feel the obligation. Perhaps. It would also have been useful to connect to other sites or forums for discussion of books, thus creating links. This was attempted several times, but never with any success. It may have been better in some ways to simply participate more on the sites already up and running, for example the Facebook site Knihy which boasts of 40,000 plus users. Overall, the Facebook site did not add anything to the collection aspect of the project, with few good tips coming forth. However, in terms of book recommendations and narratives related to streetprint in bratislava, there was benefit, and this speaks to potential future use by others, particularly those with a better grasp of and more contact with the Facebook realm.

The blog was far more satisfying for me as it allowed for the reporting of work in progress, however incomplete, in a form that presented, if not encouraged, more extended involvement. It was often time consuming and nomadic internet use is not always convenient, but between text and photos the blog was personally more rewarding. This was in part because in contrast to the Facebook site, the English blog seemed a release from the difficulties of writing and speaking in Slovak. It was, I think more importantly, also quite good in that it forced me to record and to consider what I was doing on a regular basis. This was particularly useful after unrecorded conversations, time spent walking and looking, or as regards comments and discussions after recorded interviews. It was not uncommon for interviewees to continue talking after I turned off the recorder, suddenly coming back to the topics at hand just when I seemed to be on my way out the door, and often providing key information. The blog certainly could have been more of a personal story, for I was using it mostly as a reporting mechanism. But this aspect could be explored further by others, perhaps. Mariana’s addition of Facebook access to her blog site was a good idea. I added this to the bottom of my blog - it could provide something of a crossover between the two forms of communication, as well as languages and network communities. Along these lines, it is clear to me that knowledge of html is useful. I mucked about with it regarding tumblr, but the trial and error process is painful and slow, and particularly aggravating with so many other things to do and not enough time to do them.

It might be worth giving future participants info as to how to set up email, Facebook, Twitter, blog, etc. specifically for the project with proper domain names, links etc. so as to make the process smooth and coordinated.

DB