Blogak 2.0

Sclipo wins Startup 2.0

admin — Fri, 25 May 2007 09:00:23 +0000

Sclipo, a social Skills-Network based upon user-generated videos, has won the Startup 2.0 contest, whose final was hold yesterday at the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao. The second place was for a very similar project coming from Israel, 5min, while the third prize will go for Properazzi, crawler-based web 2.0 property search engine for all of Europe.

Startup 2.0 was opened to all webs 2.0 from Europe. A total of 260 projects coming from the main European countries took part in it. The 5 finalists presented their projects yesterday in Bilbao before an audience of 300 people. The jury interrogated each one of them for 15 minutes.

Sclipo is a platform for any kind of skills, such as cooking, well-being, technology or sports. All content is 100% user-generated and evaluated. It stands for: Skills + CLIP + yO (=I). It is based in Barcelona and has an international team managed by Gregor Gimmy. Its business model is based on contextual advertising, market research and premium user services.

Follow Blogak 2.0’s live videocasting

admin — Wed, 23 May 2007 23:54:11 +0000

If you can not come to the Guggenheim, you will be able to follow the live videocasting of Blogak 2.0. It’s available thru this page and you just need to have Flash installed in your computer. It’s actually like youtubing or videoblogging in real time… Enjoy it!

Blogak & Beers tonight at 11 pm at Kafe Antzokia

admin — Wed, 23 May 2007 23:46:43 +0000

If you want to have some beers with other bloggers coming to Blogak 2.0, do come tonight to Kafe Antzokia (find it here) at 11 p.m. We will party together! This event is also opened to people who could not come during the day to Blogak 2.0.

Is Blogak 2.0 an unconference?

admin — Tue, 22 May 2007 21:15:47 +0000

Last year we tried Blogak 2.0 to be an unconference. This means that people would just ask to be invited to talk and they were so. It worked pretty well, but we thought it should be improved, specially in a one-day event that needs to move fast. That is why this year’s Blogak 2.0 is half a conference a half an unconference.

He have invited some people to talk and we have decided the subjects of one or two panels. But the rest comes out of what people have been proposing. Startup 2.0 is the result of a long process of ‘project selection’. Part of the panels have been arranged on the Net and with the help of people from the University of Deusto.

We also expect the conference to be made by you, either in your blog or via Twitter or the backchannel. Your participation during the conference is one of its most important items. We hope this is more an experience than a conference. Taste and enjoy it!

Education 2.0

admin — Mon, 21 May 2007 19:09:10 +0000

Usually students attend classes to listen to some people who explain some boring things about a boring world. Well, perhaps it’s not exactly like that all the times. But, yes, many times it seems that there’s nothing interesting about attending classes. Not in a traditional way. The system is mostly based on memory, on studying, on reading. Teachers behave as teachers and students behave as students. Everything is in order. But could web 2.0 change roles? Let’s have a look at the Education 2.0 panel, at blogak 2.0.

It could be that the near future will show students playing an active role and teachers creating the conditions in order to make it possible. Blogs, wikis and folksonomies try to encourage the participation of people. No content is out there if we haven’t created it. The web is what we produce (remember The Machine Is Us/Using Us video). Then, could we imagine students creating their own contents for their classes. Perhaps education is not for experts -people who know- but for students -people who want to know.

Blogs and wikis are a means to an end. People must write the papers. And some times papers are really blank spaces where the knowledge is not a question of reading but a question of writing. We need emotional connections with trainees. People must write and must make a lot of mistakes. Teacher must co-write and wait for interactions. Be patient.

That is more or less our intention when we participate at education 2.0 panel. We write our worries at our wiki. It’s just the way we keep in touch in order to build a few ideas for the panel. The wiki is the place where we meet each other and where we can know which our concerns are. That’s simple: one project, one wiki .

And that’s the way we can keep in touch with you too. It’s in Spanish, but it’s quite simple to use some translation tools. Please let us know your opinions or interests. Do you think education 2.0 is just a fashion? Will it change the way we teach and the way we learn? Just a minute, it’s on Thursday 24th. See you at blogak 2.0. Please write the wiki, write your education. It’s up to you here.

Spanish people talk about Web 2.0

admin — Mon, 21 May 2007 14:26:01 +0000

This video was taken during Startup 2.0 two weeks ago in Madrid. Bloggers and Internet experts talk about Web 2.0: what they think and expect from it. A lot of optimism surrounds this word. Are you also very positive about it?

Rob Malda, from Slashdot, will be in Blogak 2.0

admin — Fri, 18 May 2007 14:18:45 +0000

Rob Malda, the founder of the largest blog, Slashdot, will be in Blogak 2.0 next May 24th. Malda is 31 years old and created Slashdot as a science fiction and technology news website back in September 1997. It was later sold to the Open Source Technology Group, which belongs to VA Software. Malda keeps running the site, though, together with Jeff Bates and Robin Miller.

The software that runs Slashdot is called Slash and is completely free. Its Spanish clon Barrapunto is based on the same software. It is known for including comments with all stories and by the fact that the stories themselves are generally submitted by readers, with editors accepting or rejecting them.

Some people think it is not exactly a blog, but its architecture is exactly the same. To prevent abusive comments, a moderation system has been implemented whereby every comment posted (including those posted anonymously) has a score (which starts at 0) and which can be incremented or decremented by semi-randomly chosen moderators. When moderating, the moderator actually chooses a given descriptor (such as “insightful”, “funny”, “troll”) and each descriptor has a positive or negative value associated with it. As such, posts not only are scored, but characterized (”20% insightful, 80% interesting”).

Moderation points added to a comment are also added to a user’s karma score. Having high karma gives one bonus point to posts made by that author. (Being a registered poster adds one more, so that the highest normally achieved starting score is two). Slashdot editors, including Rob Malda (”CmdrTaco”), can moderate limitlessly. This system is in fact very similar to that of Digg and its Spanish clons, suchs as Meneame or Fresqui.

Famous or well-known active “Slashdotters” include:

* Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales (username “jwales”)
* actor Wil Wheaton (username “CleverNickName”)
* id Software technical director John Carmack (username “John Carmack”)
* Nmap author Fyodor (username “fv”)
* GNOME and Mono architect Miguel de Icaza (username “miguel”)
* Freenet creator Ian Clarke (username “sanity”)
* ReiserFS creator Hans Reiser (username “hansreiser”)
* open source evangelist Bruce Perens (username “Bruce Perens”)
* MySQL CEO Marten Mickos (username “martenmickos”)

We will twitter this year’s Blogak 2.0

admin — Mon, 14 May 2007 23:30:09 +0000

Twitter is such a social phenomenon that we plan to use it in order to webcast the event. You will be able to follow Blogak 2.0 if you aggregate yourself to this user in Twitter. We will also use this blog and everything will be video-casted in real time from the Guggenheim Museum to the whole world.

Startup 2.0’s final will be held during Blogak 2.0

admin — Mon, 14 May 2007 23:27:41 +0000

Why did we organize Startup 2.0? Last year we had so many projects wanting to be presented during Blogak 2.0 that we thought it would be a good idea to give everybody the chance to come through a contest. This contest was called Startup 2.0 as we wanted it to have some kind of business sense. The first part was held in Madrid and the European final is going to take place in Bilbao during Blogak 2.0.

Everything is ready for Blogak 2.0

admin — Mon, 14 May 2007 23:18:55 +0000

The room is reserved (in the Guggenheim Museum), wi-fi connections are ready, speakers are already arranged… and the food is being cooked. So everything is ready for this year’s event. Remember this was the first Web 2.0 event all around Europe!