Ebbs and Blogs

 Technology  5 Responses »
Feb 282008
 

One of the inter­est­ing ses­sions I went to at North­ern­Voice was the Blogs are Dead; Long Live the Blog­ger ses­sion facil­it­ated ably by Chris Lott. There’s a write-up on this wiki; as usu­al a lot of thought-pro­vok­ing stuff was said, only some of which I’ve found recor­ded. I’ve noticed changes myself over the last few years of observing part of the blog­ging world (by neces­sity, only a small part). 

I’ve noticed that lots of people aren’t blog­ging as much, or indeed any more, for var­ied reas­ons. Some spend more time on twit­ter, which scratches their com­mu­nic­a­tion itch, and effect­ively let their blog lapse. Some post no longer need to tell friends and fam­ily what they’re up to via a blog. A fair num­ber of crafters are on Ravelry and post their pro­jects there and don’t need a blog any more.

I’ve noticed changes in the blogs, too; maybe because many people whose blogs I read are using twit­ter et al for the more “trivi­al” dis­cus­sions and thoughts, the blog post­ings tend to be about weight­i­er sub­jects, or work-related. In many cases the tone is more form­al and (dare I say it) bor­ing; I’ve giv­en up on quite a few blogs that used to be fun to read, even if the sub­ject mat­ter was incon­sequen­tial, because they now are more weighty and ser­i­ous and not as enter­tain­ing. Or they’ve turned into col­lec­tions of links. The occa­sion­al link posts, with com­ments as to why those links are worth click­ing on, is fine, but I quickly tire of blogs that con­sist solely of links to oth­er blogs and art­icles. I really can­’t be bothered hanging on in the hope that the author will even­tu­ally come up with some­thing original.

One big excep­tion that I’ve noticed is the craft­ing blogs, which (not­with­stand­ing the people who’ve quit now that they’re on Ravelry) have much the same type of con­tent. I star­ted a craft­ing blog after join­ing Ravelry, and I know oth­ers who’ve done the same. Many crafters see their blogs as a refresh­ing change from work, delib­er­ately not talk­ing about top­ics out­side the bound­ar­ies, keep­ing the dis­cus­sion focussed (more or less) on the ser­i­ous craft­ing issues of types of yarn, wheth­er the knit­ted object will fit once it’s fin­ished, and the best way to cre­ate a par­tic­u­lar design or concept. Or just post­ing “I did this this way and this is how it turned out.” 

I don’t think the blog is dead; it’s just chan­ging as the concept dif­fuses out­side the circle of early adop­ters who are busy twit­ter­ing at each other. 

MooseCamp 2008

 Conference, Vancouver  1 Response »
Feb 242008
 

Anoth­er nice Fri­day in Feb­ru­ary for Moose­Camp; some­how the Moose­Camp day man­aged to score nice weath­er two years in a row. This year’s Moose­Camp was big­ger than pre­vi­ous years, and I think we’re get­ting to the lim­it of how many people we can take without los­ing some­thing. We also seem to be get­ting a lot more people who are inter­ested more in com­mer­cial aspects of blog­ging and social media than the per­son­al side, so I’m not sure how that’s going to play out in the future either.

I spent much of the morn­ing on the t‑shirt and regis­tra­tion desk until things settled down, then went to the mul­ti­lin­gual ses­sion, mostly since I occa­sion­ally won­der wheth­er (I should try blog­ging in Ger­man as well as Eng­lish. There were quite a few people in the room, but it turned out that only two of us were inter­ested in the sub­ject for a per­son­al blog; every­one else was inter­ested in the sub­ject for a cli­ent, or for their com­pany. Which isn’t bad, and I’m sure the oth­er people in the room were glad to know that sev­er­al oth­ers were inter­ested in the cor­por­ate aspects of the sub­ject, it was just of less interest to me personally. 

Pho­tocamp took the first part of the after­noon; inter­est­ing as always and some decent tips on light­ing, even for the few of us who use little pock­et cam­er­as (there were some ser­i­ously big cam­er­as on show).

I spoke in the last part of the inter­net boot­camp. The talk I’d pre­pared was meant, in good uncon­fer­ence fash­ion, to be reas­on­ably inter­act­ive. James agreed to help out, since he also found the top­ic inter­est­ing: What Next? The idea was to talk to people who’d been blog­ging for a little while and wanted to take their blog to the next level; I was primed with top­ics such as broad­en­ing the focus versus nar­row­ing it, how the tone and style of blogs tend to devel­op, what effect incor­por­at­ing work top­ics often has, mul­tiple blogs versus one blog on mul­tiple top­ics. A few minutes in it became really obvi­ous that people wer­en’t inter­ested in the sub­ject, and when I asked why they were there, almost all were inter­ested in fig­ur­ing out how their com­pany should start blog­ging, or make their com­pany blogs more effect­ive. So in even bet­ter uncon­fer­ence style, I changed the sub­ject and star­ted talk­ing about how Sun had imple­men­ted blog­ging. Most people seemed much hap­pi­er with that sub­ject, and we dis­cussed a lot of related issues. For­tu­nately it was the last ses­sion of the day so the fact we then went over time did­n’t seem to upset too many people. 

Yearly Rethink

 Conference, Vancouver  No Responses »
Dec 062007
 

One of the reas­ons I like going to North­ern Voice is that it always gives me lots to think about, in terms of what to write about on my blog, what tech­nic­al tricks to try out, and how to write bet­ter. Oth­er people choose their blo­giversary, or maybe New Year’s Day, but I find North­ern Voice to be bet­ter. One reas­on of course is the num­ber of enthu­si­ast­ic people there talk­ing about blog­ging and social media and how they use them.

All of which is a long way of say­ing that this year I’ll be look­ing for more of that spark, that enthu­si­asm in the speak­er sub­mis­sions. What talks will make me happy to be blog­ging, will give me incent­ive to make my blog bet­ter, will tell me of inter­est­ing things to try? What talks would make me want to start blog­ging, if I wer­en’t already? The dead­line is Monday, Decem­ber 10th, so you don’t have long to pol­ish those ideas (and we can­’t take late sub­mis­sions as we’re select­ing talks that same week and we do need to read them first). For oth­er views on what we’re look­ing for, check out Dar­ren’s post­ing, or Bri­an’s. Bri­an also has some pho­tos of the party spot for the Thursday even­ing as an added incent­ive to go there and read what he has to say. Once you’re ready, sub­mit your idea while it’s fresh and before you forget.

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