knowledge management (km) / km metrics / opinion

November 4, 2005

What is on a blogger's mind

I quite like the step by step thought process on creating a blog on thedefeatists.com:

People who are trying to decide whether to create a blog or not go through a thought process much like this:

  1. The world sure needs more of ME.
  2. Maybe I'll shout more often so that people nearby can experience the joy of knowing my thoughts.
  3. No, wait, shouting looks too crazy.
  4. I know - I'll write down my daily thoughts and badger people to read them.
  5. If only there was a description for this process that doesn't involve the words egomaniac or unnecessary.
  6. What? It's called a blog? I'm there!

    The blogger's philosophy goes something like this: Everything that I think about is more fascinating than the crap in your head. The beauty of blogging, as compared to writing a book, is that no editor will be interfering with my random spelling and grammar, my complete disregard for the facts, and my wandering sentences that seem to go on and on and never end so that you feel like you need to take a breath and clear your head before you can even consider making it to the end of the sentence that probably didn't need to be written anyhow.

    If that doesn't inspire you to read my blog, I don't know what will.

It certainly did inspire me to keep on reading the defeatists.com blog

Looks like quite a large amount of people are currently thinking "The world sure needs more of ME": The number of blogs on the internet is doubling every five months, according to Technorati and ever since I reentered the blogosphere I have come across the most diverse applications of blogging: Internal blogging seems to be taking off with many types of organisations including law firms, some people organise their social lives using blogs, a hindered journalist publishes what is not published elsewhere, a German woman in Saudi writes a great piece about the life of her and her cat and a student from the uni where I teach has started to use a weblog as an instrument to write about his life and the content of his KM & beyond studies. Their head of faculty, Sebastian Eschenbach told me that on his new MSc course everyone is required to keep a blog as an online diary as part of the course. I quite like that idea, too.

The rise of blogs has certainly changed the way I deal with information:

  • I use
    • technorati search for a lot of queries I used to do on Google and I often find more satisfying information there, as it is usually concentrated in the hands of individuals who are or aim to become recognised experts in a certain area.

    • FeedDemon is on whenever my computer (at the office and at home) is on. The way I keep myself updated on news and current affairs has changed just like the way I keep up with professional developments. Blogs like Informed Comment have replaced me looking for that kind of information on traditional newspaper websites and technorati watchlist provides an RSS feed for any type of keyword I decide to monitor.
For my own blog I sometimes find it difficult to draw the line properly between what I can reasonably publish here and what not. After all, this information will be out here for good and can hardly be retracted and made invisible again. I am comfortable with that as far as it concerns my professional opinion and my research, but what about personal stuff? Lilia Efimova (whom I admire a lot for the blog she created and who is sometimes very personal in what she writes) on mathemagenic has an interesting post on the subject:

As for me - I'm not comfortable making things too explicit in my blog. Explicit link gives things away without any work - just one look and you know my bio and demographics and how I look and what is my phone number. Somehow I''m not comfortable with having all that information instantly visible.
I am a very political person and I have strong believes about many things, but then again these don't belong here, even though I would sometimes feel the urge to state these here rather than "only" in my offline social surroundings.

posted by ingo at Friday, November 04, 2005