Sunday, February 16, 2014 the business of blogging: one voice from 14
Why blog? Twenty years on from the first weblogs and the question still gets asked. Just recently it has been asked by CIPR president Stephen Waddington who asked 14 bloggers in his network the same question. The fascinating results have been turned into a download and a slideshare. This is one contribution.
by Dan Slee
Blogging. Why bother? It's a question I've asked myself before as I've reached for the laptop after a busy day when probably a bottle of wine would have been better.
As it turns out, I'm not alone. According to one estimate there are more than 200 million and that's not event counting micro-blogging platform Twitter.
For me, it's a place to think things through, bounce an idea or record something as a snapshot and it was fascinating to read through the other entries Stephen captured in 'The Business of Blogging.' You can read it here.
There is also a slideshare where you can read and download.
This is my short contribution:
There's a loose network of people in the public sector I'm proud to belong to. We've been called 'militant optimists' because despite everything we're still determined to make a difference.
We work in central government - or in my case local government - and we organise through Twitter, we meet-up and we kick around ideas, we learn and we share through blog posts.
Why do we bother? Because we're all in it together. We're all facing cuts and we're seeing empty chairs where colleagues used to be. We're faced with the internet turning old certainties on its head.
We're not in competition against each other so we can collaborate. We stage our own events that anyone can come to and we share ideas afterwards on blog posts that have become the currency for learning in a sector where training budgets have been stripped where the rule book hasn't been written and it's never been more important to do a good job. For us blogging is booming and mobile is simply sharing our ideas on the go.
I've blogged for five years. Why do I blog? Because I can flesh out an idea far easier online than in practice. I can capture or share. It's changed how I think, how I work and I'm finding doors opening that the blog has led me to.
Dan Slee is co-creator of comms2point0 and has blogged here since 2009.
Reader Comments (1)
'militant optimists' - I like that phrase. I have sensed it in the words on Comms2Point0 recently.