Blogalog Anytwo?

I just ran across the term blogalog in Bruce Eckel's weblog, Thinking About Computing.  As Bruce describes it, a blogalog is...

... "conversation on a web log" (a two-person discussion, which looks a bit like an interview except the interviewer has as much to contribute as the person being interviewed. It would also be possible to have more than two people in the conversation, but we're going to start with two people). It is another way to create high-quality content via the web, without the usual "noise" that comes from a newsgroup...

I'm a believer.  Last year, Bill French and I used this technique; we created a co-authored weblog to capture our ideas as we brainstormed what would eventually become MySmartChannels and the underlying MyST Web Services platform.  Our first "blogalogging" effort turned out to be a great exercise; it deepened our understanding of the nature of co-authored channels and we managed to build MySmartChannels with only one face-to-face meeting.

We now regularly use co-authored channels.  Some have just two contributors (like this one), but others have over a dozen.  The MySmartChannels security model and invitation mechanism makes it straightforward to assemble various size groups of channel authors (and observers) in varying roles (e.g., some authors may be permitted to edit other authors' contributions; some authors may or may not be permitted to delete their own entries, and so on).

Co-authored channels ("blogalogs", if you prefer) are an important complement to—not a replacement for—other dialoging mechanisms such as IM, newsgroups, e-mail threads, phone calls, or even face-to-face conversations.  In pursuit of agile content, capturing conversations as channel content makes great sense for those conversations that represent knowledge assets.