I used to have a problem with blogging; I’d get stuck coming up with things for me to talk about, or I’d take so long trying to craft the post that I’d miss the moment and forget the message. Now that blogging is part of my job, I don’t have to put it off every time the time the topic comes up. Additionally, by using a number of different types of blogging platforms, I’ve gotten a little less compulsive about having to write pages and pages (although perhaps not in evidence on this particular blog ;D ). Here at ETS, there is an experiment in multi-author blogging called, appropriately, Stuff.
What is it? Short snippets of interesting items that people have come across lately. Things like hardware, software, apps, ideas; lots of clippings from other sources, and a brief explanation of why it’s cool/interesting/relevant. Since I’ve been at ETS, I’ve been adding posts of my own, but a bit torn about posting to another blog that wasn’t mine. Enter Brad Kozlek to the rescue. Brad showed me how to pull my Stuff entries into my Renegade blog. Now my content shows up in both places, and allows me to keep continuity here about technologies and things that I’m working on — as well as enabling me to participate in the conversation on Stuff. I love it when we can perform duel duty like that; it just makes good sense. (Note: Of course, it helps when you code it right, too. I goofed before Christmas, and as a result, missed the last 4-5 comments on my Renegade too. Thank you Audrey and Brad for helping me sort it out! Better late than never. Doh!)
But back to Stuff. It’s a great place to put an ear to the ground, and hearing about new stuff that’s happening all over. It’s a little bit of everything, all in one place. Wanna participate? Leave a comment and I’ll see it gets to the right person. I think the more people that get involved in the conversation, the better the conversation is.
Get involved, or just follow the RSS feed. It’s good stuff.
I’ve personally loved the Stuff blog for lots of reasons, but writing for an audience that I know and respect has a lot to do with it. When we first launched it we were honestly sharing for each other — the other authors in the space. That seemed to motivate us all. There is a good lesson in that for a course site … if students are writing in the same place, many of them see it as writing for each other. That is really interesting to me and I think it impacts the quality of the writing.
The other thing Stuff did was really drive home the one button web concepts that I am constantly touting. The idea that you can put a little bookmarklet in your toolbar and really publish just about anything with a single click is an amazing turn of events online. That little experiment pushed me to switch from worpress to typepad — the speed and ease of one button publishing is another one of those little motivating factors that pushes me to write.