Collaborative blogging for health informatics professional development Peter J. Murray

Peter J. Murray Director and Founding Fellow, CHIRAD, UK Vice President Strategic Planning, IMIA Blogs panel – Medicine 2.0

With thanks to other colleagues: Margaret Maag Karl Øyri Rod Ward Scott Erdley Bill Perry

Blogs panel – Medicine 2.0

Blogs panel – Medicine 2.0

Blogs panel – Medicine 2.0

Successes Good feedback; hits and readers; good evaluation of value Collaborative model To get interaction, several perspectives, spread workload – provide professional development Health/nursing informatics events medinfo2004, medinfo2007, NI2006, MIE2005, MIE2006, HISA2008, SINI, Rutgers, etc 'Failures' Not as much interaction as we would have liked - why? Added interaction Talkr, photos, mobile blogging, ...

Where did we start? It's all Rod Ward's fault There was online reporting (and life) before blogs, Google, Web 2.0 etc Blogs panel – Medicine 2.0

Blogs panel – Medicine 2.0

Blogs panel – Medicine 2.0 NI2000 - Auckland, New Zealand

Blogs panel – Medicine 2.0 NI2003 - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

October 15, 2004 - 700 posts - >35 contributors Informaticopia - http://www.rodspace.co.uk/blog/blogger.html

Medinfo2004 Sept 2004, San Francisco Rod-style web report PLUS blog Blogs panel – Medicine 2.0

Havana, CUBA 2007 Geneva, SWITZERLAND 2005 Baltimore, USA 2005-08 Vienna, AUSTRIA 2007 Seoul, KOREA 2006 Harrogate, UK 2005-07 San Francisco, USA 2004, 2007 Maastricht, NETHERLANDS 2006 Regensburg, GERMANY 2007 Goteborg, SWEDEN 2008 Edinburgh, UK 2006 Brisbane, AUSTRALIA 2007 Durban, SOUTH AFRICA 2008 Toronto, CANADA 2006 Blogs panel – Medicine 2.0

Purposely collaborative model – 'on-the-fly', 'real-time' blogging Professional development and virtual participation Tried different blogging software (b2evolution, Blogger, Sys9, Tiki-wiki ...)‏ Settled on WordPress (for the moment - plug-ins)‏ Core 'krew' of contributors – welcome others In practice, usually 2-3 main contributors per event Blogs panel – Medicine 2.0

text-to-speech -> podcast Plug-ins: Asides (like Twitter)‏ Spam-karma Photos: within posts Picasa ClustrMap Feedjit Blogs panel – Medicine 2.0

Live blogging Twitter-like Multiple contributors Add others 'on the fly' Replayable archive Blogs panel – Medicine 2.0

Blogs panel – Medicine 2.0

Blogs panel – Medicine 2.0

Blogs for virtual conference participation What we had hoped for: - lots of people wanting to post items - lots of comments - lots of readers - demonstration of the collaborative model working. Blogs panel – Medicine 2.0

Blogs for virtual conference participation What we found: - many promised but few delivered - the principal providers were the main bloggers - interaction is lower than hoped for - reminders to people help in readership levels. Blogs panel – Medicine 2.0

Blogs, interaction and participation – some evaluation data and lessons learned Generally felt to be a useful adjunct to events Most felt it was easy to use Should be available post-event (archive)‏ Must be easy to access and participate - eg wireless – or people won't post during the event Reminders boost readership RSS feeds to email/browser Blogs panel – Medicine 2.0

Conference blogs - on-the-fly reportage or analysis? - time and collaboration elements make it different from much other blogging - we believe it is worth doing, and valuable to those who read and contribute Blogs panel – Medicine 2.0

Further information and contact (and any updated version of presentation) ‏ www.hi-blogs.info [email_address] Blogs panel – Medicine 2.0