I just came back from the ‘second snow workshop’ of the LiquidPub project in Ovronnaz, Switzerland. Besides the location (first time at a winter-sports resort for me), the topic of the workshop was fascinating. It gave me a better understanding of the LiquidPub project, and while I had read most of the papers on LiquidPub before arriving, nothing can replace some face to face interaction with those in the project. There was a good, and vibrant atmosphere.
The mountains near Ovronnaz
The slides of my presentation on LogiLogi, and how it is minimalistic (and minimalism is good), are on-line here. The presentation went well, and most people I spoke to were quite positive about LogiLogi.
While waiting at the airport on the way back, I wrote up some of my thoughts and questions about LiquidPub. Such as: whether people really want to continue updating articles, what motivates people who work on large academic software projects, why such projects tend to come up with overly complicated things and how academic software-projects are, or should be funded.
During the workshop I also thought a lot about possible weaknesses of LogiLogi (it not having many users so far, being the most pressing problem), and about how this could be improved. Making things easier and simpler seems key. One improvement towards this, which I implemented right away, is that titles and tags now only need to be specified after a text (logi) has been written. This should make it easier to simply begin writing, and worry about a title or tags once the logi is typed up.
At the airport I also wrote down some of these thoughts: whether there are people who are willing to share ideas in anything but journal-papers, problems with usability, and LogiLogis seeming similarity to a blogging platform.
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