This post is part confession, part request, part exploration.
The Confession: If you don’t blog but have some significant ideas, learning, teaching to share, I likely may not know about your or even follow your work. Which is to say that my RSS aggregator has become the primary means by which I learn. During my time at BLC, I was privileged to listen to Marco Torres and his students talk about their work. I had heard of Marco before but only through the blogs of others. To my knowledge Marco doesn’t blog. He has great stuff, phenomenal stuff to share but I don’t tend to use his resources as much as I should because he doesn’t blog. Only when others attend a conference where he is speaking am I reacquainted with his good work. I’m introduced to books, music and ideas this way. I certainly don’t think this is a good thing to rely so heavily on my network but with RSS, I get a better sense of who people are, what type of work they are doing and am apt to use their work more in my learning and sharing. Blogging allows even authors to share their work beyond the scope of their book. Case in point is the Freakonomics blog. I loved the book and the writings of Levitt and Dubner and am happy to follow their adventures via their blog. It keeps the work of their book fresh in my mind. They continue to expand on their original ideas and of course allows me to contribute as well. I feel a part of the learning in a much more invested way.
The Request: Please blog. That means folks like, Marco Torres, Tim Tyson, Marc Prensky, (hasn’t blogged in a year never allowed for comments) and Dan Pink (he does blog but should do more and without comments is it really a blog?)….I could go on. Blog because it adds a personal touch to your work. Blog as an extension of your work. Blog to market yourself. Read Naked Conversations if you don’t believe me. Don’t tell me you don’t have time. You all spend lots of time in great offline conversations and experiences, simply bring these online. People are interested. I don’t have the time to check your websites periodically to see if you’ve got something new. I’m being selfish but you have to come to me. That’s what RSS is for!
On a side note, do these people even subscribe to any feeds? Will they know I’ve challenged them to blog? My guess is no.
The Exploration: I had this discussion with Will on the bus and he told me that I’m in the minority in terms of where I get my learning but I’m wondering how else we can stay connected to the great work out there without blogs and RSS? If RSS is the Killer App that many claim it to be, when it takes off as email did, will that force folks into blogging? That’s maybe a reach but I’m trying to figure out how else people will be able to have the knowledge and understanding of important work or will people simply choose a small number of people and ideas to focus as they have done prior to all the web 2.0 stuff?
I’m just saying, this is how I learn. It’ maybe not the best way but I in our world, I don’t know how else.
I need you to be a feed before I read.
[tags]rss,feed,marcotorres,freakonomics,timtyson,marcprensky,danpink,nakedconversations,[/tags]