Mar 13, 2010 | blog
Ok, it’s my first day at SXSW, and I’ve already run into about 10 online friends in the first hour here at the Austin Convention Center.
I decided to start the day in the Bloggers Lounge, which most of the folks I’ve connected with online over the last many years. The lounge is set up with wired Internet and power for everyone who comes in, and there’s a bookable space for podcasting and videocasting or recording shows.
Altogether, it’s a great resource for bloggers as they create content and network with each other.
Jul 3, 2008 | blog
I’d like to take a minute and send birthday wishes to Liz Strauss. Liz writes over at Successful Blog about blogging and business, and is one of my favorite bloggers on the topic. She has a way of getting people involved, bringing them to engage with others and do great things.
Happy Birthday Liz!
I met Liz before really meeting her, as most of us bloggers usually do. Following her blog, she helped me find a few things that I didn’t know I wanted to do. Liz is one of these kinds of people who you really want to meet, to talk with, to learn from.
Luckily I was able to meet Liz in person at SOBCon08 in Chicago this spring. In classic Liz form, she brought together a fantastic event that really connected bloggers to each other, and has helped form a number of friendships and working groups that would never have had the opportunity to get started without Liz’s efforts.
I want to thank you Liz for all the great conversations you’ve started, for the things you share & teach, for the introductions to folks, for the tips & suggestions, and for making things happen. You’re an inspiration, a teacher, an instigator, an organizer, but mostly to all of us, your a friend.
Happy Birthday Liz!
And I can proudly say, that because of Liz, I’m an SOB!
Feb 7, 2008 | blog
Why is it that the very people who make all that wonderful technology work for your company don’t blog that much? That’s a question I’ve been curious about for the last few years. Yeah there are many technology bloggers, but I’m talking about people who staff the information technology departments around the world. Where are you guys? I find a few here and there, but there aren’t many.
I’ve suggested, recommended, given ideas and supported many of my fellow IT friends to help them find the value that blogging can bring. I’m continually confused at the explanations, or reasoning that people find not to. Answers like, “I can’t talk about work”, or “it’s not secure” and the one that still amazes me for many IT pros, “the Internet isn’t safe”.
Yeah, all those answers (and more) are true, but it shouldn’t keep you from engaging and bringing your expertise to the party. I’ve several friends who could bring a great deal to the blogosphere, some are true gurus on many aspects related to enterprise information technology implementation. The biggest limiting factor for most people really comes down to time.
Time is every bloggers most challenging aspect, but it’s no different than any other endeavor. How to balance, career, home life, and a blog is what we all battle every day as bloggers. However, there is so much reward that the challenge and the cost in time is worth the effort. Many of the IT people I know, are so busy with their current projects, that they can’t even get away from their desks at lunch time. What the heck is that about? Even during the most interesting and challenging projects, you need to allow yourself to think about other things.
If there is one thing I would pass on to fellow IT workers about blogging is that it allows a person to disengage a little bit. Writing about things that are interesting to you lets you exercise a bit of your mind that yearns for attention. It allows you to think in new directions, learning more about your interests as well as yourself.
Back to those excuses… yes they’re true to a certain degree, but their mainly just excuses. Kind of like finding reasons you didn’t do your homework back in high school. Come on, you can find more than the work aspect of IT to talk about – you do in person, why not on a blog? Not secure – talk about security if it’s a passion, make it interesting to the average person so they learn more about it. Don’t think the Internet is a safe place to bare your soul? Use a pseudonym – writers have done it for centuries and blogging is nothing different.
For some reason, IT is not where many bloggers are coming from lately, and I really would like to see that change. Maybe it’s just the circles I run in, or the market here in Minneapolis, MN that is a bit more conservative when it comes to voicing opinions. How about your IT friends? I’m looking for more IT bloggers! 🙂
Photo credit: Grant Mitchell
Technorati Tags: Information Technology, Bloggers, Information Technology Bloggers
Sep 3, 2007 | blog
I’ve been on a crusade of sorts lately, looking for unique voices in the blogosphere, to find more interesting and relevant content. In the process, I’ve been finding better ways to absorb the information I find.  Many of these methods are a change from how I consumed information in the past and I cover five of them here today.
First, of course, I’ve gone through and gotten rid of all the “dead” or abandoned feeds that added unneeded bulk to my daily Google Reader adventures.
Second, I’ve identified my top 10 all stars, and started visiting their blogs directly to read what they’ve written. This has been a huge improvement for me in getting their point of view on a more personal level, one of the biggest things that I felt I was missing in a feed reader. By the way, that original list of 10 has expanded to 18 blogs that I visit every day (but hey, that’s another post). Yes, it takes much more time than a reader, but these people’s work is important to me and deserves more time than a quick scan in a feed reader.
Third, I’ve started to “speed read” in Google Reader. The difference has been a boon to my information consumption because I no longer try to build each sentence from it’s component words & letters. Instead, I have been scanning each paragraph, using a visual recognition technique that constructs the concepts the writer is presenting. This has allowed me to reduce the time it takes to read the feeds in my reader and continue to add more feeds as I come across new & interesting sites.
This has not been easy, as we’re programmed at an early age to read every word, and then practice this function for decades. Of course all those years of traditional reading builds up a visual library of words & phrases that are more quickly recognized than mechanically assembling each sentence a word at a time.
Fourth, I’ve used the tagging feature in Google Reader to separate out the news feeds from the rest of the blog feeds. These news feeds I literally scan for keywords and quickly move on it they aren’t new, informative, or otherwise don’t interest me. The remaining blog feeds, I’ve also tried to tag specific to different genres like blogging, mobile technology, social media and so on. This way, I can either read the “river of news” of all my feeds from top to bottom, or just focus on a specific genre if I’m limited on time and need to prioritize my reading.
Fifth, the last thing that has been helping me is to perform a “quick glance” at the post in the feed to see if it is visually appealing before starting to scan the text. This quick glance impression of the post along with looking for the “meat” of the post in the first sentence or two quickly indicates to me if it’s worth continuing to consuming it. While this has backfired in some instances, I usually find the post again by another blog pointing to it, and I give it more attention on the second pass because of this.
So these are my latest methods and techniques to consume content faster and give me back a few precious minutes each day to use for writing, working, or relaxing. I don’t know if any of this is of value to you, but it’s how I currently handle a growing number of feeds.
Oh, and one last thing – three of my latest “top bloggers” jumped from “oh, this is an interesting blog” to my top list in less than a week – and I have my original 10 bloggers to blame thank for linking to more quality bloggers! 😉
Photo credit, austinevan
Jul 17, 2007 | blog
Shel Israel makes the point that blogging is normalizing, and I think he’s right on the mark here. The discussion among several bloggers is that blogging is “cooling off”, or becoming less popular. It may be true, but Shell posits the idea that there are additional social media tools and services that people are migrating to.
The social media webscape has changed in the last two years, not so much because people are becoming less enamored of blogging, but because of additional outlets. Micro-blogging services like Twitter (and Jaiku, Pownce, and Hictu) are making huge changes in the conversation. Social networking sites like the now-booming Facebook, or LinkedIn are bringing new ways to connect, network, and share in the conversation.
He points out that we all enjoy talking about the latest thing, whether its blogging, Facebook, iPhone or Harry Potter. Its what’s new that takes up a large part of the popular conversation and media attention. Many of us still use landline telephones even though we also have mobile phones. The analog clock is still popular even though digital clocks are abundant and easier to read at a glance. We still read newspapers despite radio, television, and the Internet.
Blogging is another medium that, at this point, is maturing. It’s entering that next stage, past fad, where it grows up a bit. Starts getting more respected, more widespread. The determined professional bloggers are what will emerge in the next months and years – many have been with it since the beginning, a decade ago.
As new technologies and ideas of new ways to communicate are developed, the conversation is naturally going to jump onto these platforms. Some will thrive, others will bust, but one thing is for sure. The conversation will continue.
Via: Global Neighbourhoods – Blogging. Not passe, just normalizing
