John Bracken

I have the immense pleasure to be sitting in a lecture hall at the University of Illinois at Chicago for the First Monday conference, FM10 Openness: Code, Science and Content. (And, what is more, I am sitting next to the stellar Eszter Hargittai, another weery traveler fresh off the Beyond Broadcast meeting.) Without a doubt, it is the most internationally and racially Internet event I have ever attended, in real time, at least. I arrived in time to hear Michael Goldhaber's paper on "The Value of Openness in Attention Economy" which posited that the "trust authenticity" that blogs enable will replace the tradition peer-reviewed journal approach. Nick Jankowski of New Media and Society just disagreed, arguing that a blog will not help a junior professor get tenure. Fascinating question– I wonder what Daniel Drezner might say?)

The conference and First Monday itself walk the talk: volunteer-driven, with the scarce resources available to them devoted for travel stipends for what is, from what I have heard from audience questions, is an impressive set of scholars. (The organizers even worked what surely must be a daunting UIC bureacracy to provide us with wireless access. Thanks!)