I’ve been regularly accused of online stalking by an aspiring celebrity blogger- and for the most part, I kind of (personally) don’t care. It is a sad, sad artifact of a dissolved friendship- and the dissolution of our freindship broke both of us, and that is something I do care about. However, the specific (or any) online activities that I’ve been accused of, I’m not guilty of- and yet the blogger has continued to leverage her alleged victimization by myself and others, by continuously blogging about it- impressing readers, gaining hits, etc.

More recently, the blogger facilitated a session at a notable tech conference, covering the subject of online identity and privacy… and has also become a prominent invited speaker for various tech companies and shindigs, as an authority on the subject of online identity and the negative backlash of online stalking.

What does bother me, is that this person now speaks as an authority on a subject that through my non-participation in the deeds I’m accused of, I know her experience to be both flawed and partially fraudulent with.

I’m a UE designer, and have been consistently working on social/participatory webapp projects, for the last 4 years. As a person who does take backend and community methods of ensuring online safety and freedom of expression, very seriously- it is a huge bee up my bonnet, that a person who is being embraced as a credible industry influencer, bases (at least) some of her work, on truths that from my personal experience with her, I know to be fraudulent.

Credibility in the online space is tough enough- and it’s such a downer, to see someone speaking on a subject as a credible authority, when I know they’re not. My experience building products has taught me that what little of the information out there, is being glommed-onto by businesses fiercely… because there just isn’t that much of it out there to look to for research and guidance, with the participatory web being as new as it is.

It is very easy to accuse someone of “online stalking” by tossing a screenshot with an IP address into a ppt slideshow, with the requisite additional forensics to conclusively tie that IP address to the person in question, not shown. We all understand PPTs at conferences to be ’snapshot’ views of much, much research that in full simply cannot be presented in a 20 or 40 minute conference presentation.

Now knowing a chunk/source of this information to be severely flawed- and in realizing this, also catching a glimpse of just how easy it is to jump up on a soabox and fabricate the “victim” flag for the presumed personal benefit of site hits and the professional appearance of credibility- I’m super, super bummed. I’m a professional in this space, and convincing suits of the credibility in research I present is a truly, truly difficult task… and a necessary one to get the green light on ideas that are new and risky (which anything has to be these days, to be innovative or competitive).

Thoughts? (sorry for the length- didn’t really know how to summarize much shorterly).

http://talo.wikispaces.com/learninginthe21stcentury

Presenting issue – http://alupton.edublogs.org

This is an awesome write up.
First off it was a pleasure meeting you at BarCamp BA and very glad that an attendee of the first BarCamp ever approved

We believe that this being our first BarCamp in Argentina (and largest in LatAm as far) and this being also the first event that we had ever organized, it came out very well. The feedback after the event was very exciting to read and extremely positive. Joel did a great write up with lots of links at http://www.barcamp.com.ar

Another aspect that made us have a great feel after BarCamp is that we were able to maintain the original BarCamp structure as both Chris and Tara had written with concerns about.

Hope to see you at BarCamp BA II

Cheers, Lucas