So one day way back last summer, my friend Pep tells me about this book he’s recently published, Un ball per la República, which is the story of the Spanish Civil War and the Republic in the village of Alcampell where he grew up. And so we get talking and I ask if he’s going to do an English version, but he says it’s impossible because it’s published by a small Catalan publisher, and I suggest blogging about the book and, you know, making it more than a “book”, with hyperlinks and maps & photos and all the sorts of stuff that a small publisher can’t afford to do, even if they had the vision. Pep loved the idea and A Dance for the Republic was born.

I’m sure “the author” will excuse me for saying that he had a very linear & chronological approach to writing and it took him a few meetings to get his read around the idea of using the blog structure as a platform, the use of categories etc. Check it out if you’re at all interested in the subject matter or how an “online book” can work.

#ict4rd

Ricard Espelt is well known to visitors of this blog for both his role as councillor for new technology in the village of Copons, as well as interviews & posts for TalkingAbout. Right now Ricard is doing a Phd on technology & rural communities and I’ve been helping him a little on his English language blog which he describes as:

“This blog is a platform to communicate with the rural communities and develop a research space for my Phd. My intention is to  use this blog to help my Personal Learning Environment to find more connections and more dialogues with the rural-local researchers.”

So here we have blog repurposed as a publicly available academic research document and communication vehicle. Check it out here

[gfa]

[gfa] is the working title of a blog which we are using to document the investigation into the fascinating and obscure of life of Ana’s grandfather, Gerardo Fernández Agüadero. Read the post about it here or go to the blog itself

Jon Hickman: MA in Social Media from Kasper Sorensen on Vimeo.

When it was announced that Birmingham City University was going to be offering the first MA in Social Media anywhere, the blog & twittersphere went crazy here in Spain. One of the many reasons for this is the power of validation that events from elsewhere have here, something I will explore later in another post as part of a wider analysis of cultural differences & social media. I like this video of course leader Jon Hickman presenting the MA because it’s the antithesis of academic presentation in Spain. It’s in what I’m becoming to think of as “the Birmingham School” – in a pub and with an appearance by Andy Mabbett!

The video by Kasper Sorensen was recorded  ”At WxWM Jon Hickman from Birmingham City University gave a presentation about the Uni’s plans to launch an MA in Social Media.WxWM is the West Midlands’ answer to Texas’ SxSW if you hadn’t figured that out already ”

MA Social Media blog

twitter hashtag #masocialmedia

“Official” University page

Twitter Jon Hickman

Openoffice estil de cel.les from informatames on Vimeo.

IN.FORMAT is a blog created by Eugeni Catalán and Jesus Mañosas to explore new ways of giving information within an office context. Tired of the traditional training formats and their poor results, the creators of IN.FORMAT hope to provide useful material in a user-friendly format. Check the blog out here (in Catalan)

 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/studies_and_observations/89041931/ 

This morning I finished reading Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing - a remarkable, beautifully written explanation and call to participation of a new world on our doorsteps byAdam Greenfield. I’ve just read on Adam’s blog that he will be in Madrid at VISUALIZAR’08: DATABASE CITY Go and see him if you can. 

The Handheld Learning conference took place in London this week and although we weren’t able to go, I discovered via their Twitter tweets that it was possible to follow a lot of the presentations through a “live” blog hosted at Cover It Live. As it was a blog format, “readers” could ask questions and add comments. It was the next best thing to being there. 

The UrbanLabs page is being continuously updated with media from the event and links for future collaboration – keep up to date here

So the mail comes and I’m surprised to get a packet from San Francisco. Inside I find the above organic tote bag from foodbuzz complete with Spanish Sauce badge. We are one of the featured publishers on this social network for foodies and as you can see, they certainly pay attention to details. Thanks guys!

Foodie! Check out foodbuzz here

Technorati Tags: foodbuzz, social media, Spanish sauce, web 2.0