Electronic Journal, Week Five Prompt

How do issues such as authorship, copyright and open access impact your desire, ability and willingness to engage in produsage, both personally and professionally?

On a personal level, authorship, copyright and open access do play a part on my desire, ability and willingness to engage in social networking. If it weren’t for online social networking and the free knowledge, wisdom, and advice I received from it, I would never have been able to successfully complete the restoration of a 34-year old motorcycle. Through social networking on the internet I have sought advice on bulletin boards and received input from others and have been able to have access to valuable out-of-print schematics and instructional guides that allowed me to successfully replace components. If not for this wealth of information I would have had to rely on a highly specialized mechanic to accomplish these tasks for me.

As for social networking through Facebook or YouTube, I have no reason to upload personal content to either of these type of sites. I am open, however, to participating in social networking groups as time and necessity warrants.

On a professional level, my ability and willingness to engage in social networking is impacted not so much by authorship or copyright as by open access. Access for me comes by way of the bandwidth afforded to me by my employer, and is directly affected by limitations imposed by my company’s IT department. One day, my office’s access to Skype may be prevented by a new firewall rule, and the next day Skype will be available again. Our offices aren’t permitted to access social networking sites such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Second Life, or Twitter; some of my peers, however, have greater access rights than me. A few weeks ago I contacted our IT manager and requested to be granted greater access though the firewall; he told me he'd look into it; and I haven’t heard back from him since. In the meantime, I loaded TweekDeck on my office machine to review others’ tweets and so far I’m not really onboard with the concept, though I see its usefulness and believe that in large part it has to do with the gadgetry. I don’t have a cell phone and I don’t have a need to text. When I communicate remotely with team members I ave other means at my disposal such as email, Skype, MS Communicator, or phone.

As part of my Produsage Assignment #2 I have created a department group wiki for our group. Initially my team members seemed eager to participage, but when we sat down to discuss it and how they could be involved I sensed resistance. My conclusion from this experience is that it may be a greater challenge to jump-start a community of practice than it is to have a community of practice that is looking for means to share content and invite others to participate.