Gary
the most extensive links to explore the bloggers commenting on the first Australian blogging conference can be found Andrew Bartlett's blog. I don't know many of them --they must be Queensland based.

Pam,
I've been following the posts on Woolley Days It is biased to political blogs, was concerned with legal issues(copyright and defamation) and concerned with the business of blogs.Very little on the creative artistic blogs. I would have thought that the creative blogs would have been presented, given the hosting by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation. Aren't the arts seen as creative industries in Queensland? Isn't culture important?

I didn't go either, even though I should have. They didn't manage publicity very well. It was free and informal, like most blogging. Strange, I thought, that the first conference on blogging didn't adopt the (supposedly) blogging ehtos of linking widely.

It seems reasonable to think that a blogging conference would be available on YouTube by now. Apparently not.

Gary,
maybe the ARC Centre for Excellence and Innovation see the self publishing of photography, art works and music as the akin to the Bonfire of the vanities.

One of its themes is Creative Innovation the domain is Content, IT, Design, BPM, Enterprise whilst the research programme is
1. International Creative Content Cultures and Australian Advantage
2. Citizen-Consumer

You would have that creative art and design blogging would come under 'Australian Advantage'.

Pam,
The ARC crowd are concerned with a creative workforce, judging by this report. By creative workforce they mean:

The ‘creative workforce’ in this context includes those who work in the cultural and creative industry sectors, as well as those who work in creative occupations in the wider economy – designers who work in car factories, or musicians who work in education. It should also be taken to include the current demand for ‘creativity’ in the workforce in general. The aim in this latter case is to understand if and how the creativity developed via arts practice and instruction in education can be parlayed into a variety of workplaces.

They don't have much of their research online.Strange given the big emphasis on digital media.

Lyn,
The conference was deemed a success.

This is from Accidental Aussie by Robyn Rebello who attended the Legal Issues and Blogs Session:

Many of the top Australian bloggers host their blogs on U.S. supported blogging software/sites to avoid potential legal liabilities that are more prone to occur in Australia due to the lack of provisions protecting them in their country. Apparently copyright laws in Australia are more restrictive than in the United States. It was also brought up that Australia has no concrete provision similar to the 1st Amendment of the United States, which protects all citizens to the freedom of speech and or of the press. Two key legal provisions that AU bloggers should be aware of when dealing with a defamation claim: notice and take down (you are notified about a defaming statement on your blog, and have the opportunity of taking it down to avoid legal course of action) and the provision to make amends with the defamed claimer.

Thought-factory net is hosted in the US.

Lyn
you mind find this post of interest --blogging and education--on the blogging conference. It's at Tama's e-Learning blog. The main blog is here.

I'd be interested in your comments.

International comparisons tend to find Australia pretty low on the list of freedom of both speech and access web-wise, and we've also managed to discourage people from using the internet for business purposes. None too bright.

Still, you'd think that the first blogging conference with knowledge of the experience of American blogging would have thought to organise electronic access. I'm being critical I know, but still. Is blogging about open access unrestrained by geography or not?

Is this about maintaining privilege or open access?

Lyn,
from an outer-suburbs western Sydney perspective--not mine, as I 'm in Canberra, an inner suburb Kingston type --- it looks to be a Queensland and academic thing. So it's turned inward by the in-digital crowd in the creative industries. It smells of smart postmodern ivory tower to me.

Maybe they will podcast it? Open it up that way?

Pam,

Thanks for the Tama link. I'll read through it properly and try to think of something intelligent to say.

Your last comment resonates with me for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. From a Gold Coast academic-in-training perspective I often get the impression it's an even more specifically Brisbane academic thing. The differences are slight but I'm particularly sensitive to them, or so I'm told. I suspect it's a polite way of telling me I'm over sensitive or possibly paranoid.

You can't blame Queensland for jealously guarding home grown intellectual developments, given its history. Still, if it's giving that impression elsewhere it's very un-bloggish.

Pam,

Hope I'm not banging on about this too much but a few years ago when Richard Florida came up with his creative class idea, the powers that be in Brisbane took him at his word and set about deliberately and methodically transforming Brisbane into Florida's ideal of a creative precinct. The idea is that creative people are a valuable but scarce resource who are attracted to a particular set of built, social and cultural conditions. Build the equivalent of Sydney's Eastern suburbs or Austin Texas and the creative class will flock to the place and start making money for you.

Combine that with Queensland defensiveness about its redneck image and you might have something approximating an explanation for your impressions.

Pam,

That year 1 blog is amazing. It's probably the most useful thing I've ever seen a blog do. Hopefully the whole school does it. It would be a shame to limit it to a single year or class.

Thinking about the applications of blogging and blogs in secondary and tertiary, are blog enthusiasts expecting a bit too much? Or giving blogging more credit than it perhaps deserves?

Personally, I think students have a right to keep the stumblings and fumblings of learning to themselves. Learning about blogs should be part of routine learning about the internet so it's not just a dull research tool or entirely about MySpace. I think it's a good thing to introduce the possibility of blogging. But I don't think it's fair to build blogging into assessed work. The blogosphere can be pretty vicious.

Other than that I'd like to see a lot more academics using the net, if not blogs, to make their work more widely accessible. The potential is obviously there for blogs to be brainstorming hubs, but so far it doesn't seem to work very well. Not on a large scale anyway.

Overall I agree that it's a mistake to get too carried away with the wonders of blogworld.

Given that blogging has no minimum academic qualifications for entry, no professional body giving out credentials and no degree course or Professors Of (yet) it's hardly surprising that an institution and its "ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation" would confine its publicity and processes to those who have demonstrated belief, commitment and deference to credentialism.

Gary and all - since I work at the cci, thought I'd contribute a couple of links to your discussion.

Creative Economy Online, the web portal associated with the Centre can be found here: http://www.creative.org.au/

And about 30 papers specifically labelled as cci publications available on QUT e-prints here: http://tinyurl.com/2y8anl

Thanks Jean,
thanks for the link to Creative Economy and so sharing what Lyn calls Queensland's home grown intellectual developments based around working up Richard Florida's creative class idea.

As I understand it this reworking goes beyond the ability to attract the creative class, to translating that underlying advantage into creative economic outcomes in the form of new ideas, new high-tech businesses and regional growth.

I see that no material from the Bloggers Conference has been posted. Does that mean bloggers are not part of the creative economy? They are digital media are they not?

I guess the absence reinforces the view that blogging has not emerged as an important vehicle for political news and debate in Australia, even if blogging has taken root. It also reinforces the argument of Ward and Cahill that the blogosphere has not transformed political communication in Australia.

So we come back to the idea of the creative class working in a wide variety of industries--- technology to entertainment, journalism to finance, high-end manufacturing to the arts--who share a common ethos that values creativity, individuality, difference, and merit. The argument is that paradigm-busting creative industries could single-handedly change the ways cities flourish and drive dynamic, widespread economic change.

Is this creative economy happening in Brisbane? It hasn't in Adelaide---it's economy has hit a crisis point, with record unemployment, stagnant productivity, a rusting industrial base, and energy/water crisis and a dangerous dependence upon irrigated agriculture with the supply of water cannot necessarily be guaranteed.

Jean,
Thanks for the QUT e-prints link to the work of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation. I see that this work of creative economy is part of an open access archive.

FXH,
I suspect the cultural context of the Australian blogging conference is Beattie's smart start idea--which reworks Richard Florida's creative class idea that leads into a high-tech/information economy.

This breaks with the old rural economy base of Queensland by placing an emphasis on emerging creative industries with their young, energetic and talented the funky inner-city neighborhoods and gracious close-in suburbs. So we have product designers, video editors, hedge-fund analysts, and marketing consultants information technologist biomedicos etc who make up this emerging new creative class.

This then gives rise to the seen the rise of the "culture wars"--between those in the low tech rura areas who value traditional virtues, and others drawn to new lifestyles and diversity of opinion that is mostly played out among intellectuals of the left and right, and which roughly parallels the ideologies of the two political parties.