Waterbug 2.0

I am coming up on a year since I started "seriously" blogging. I have to laugh at the thought. Seriousness is measured on a sliding scale in the vast blogging sea. My on again off again postings are mere dips into the pond compared to others who swim 24/7 in the networked waters of the blogosphere. Some can post -trackback-mashup-tag their way through every day as if there minds were a fishbowl we all can observe. For me, my ideas have to incubate and metamorphosize until I let them out of the box. But each day brings a budding new idea and, after awhile, I have nothing left but pond scum; primitive life but nothing I want to keep as a pet.

It is funny that in my own cove of the pond I am seen as an expert. I am asked to teach classes and build online communities such as the one I am starting for the upcoming ODCE conference in March (I'll provide a link when more of the parts are put together), and the strategic planning blogs and wikis for my division where I work. If I am seen as expert then that is evidence of how wide the divide is among education professionals when it comes to use of web 2.0 tools.

As for my own blogging evolution, I am still trying to figure out why and how to use blogging to some greater purpose. I feel like the past year has been a big experiment. Blogging is pleasurable for me in a number of ways. There is an elegance in how the blog platform integrates with the wider web. Pings, trackbacks, tags and feeds are the caffein in the jar of info beans. And all the various tools and platforms are exciting to a modest tech-tinkerer like me. So much so that I may ditch blogger for another service that will afford me more toys to play with.

There is also the narcissistic pleasure of thinking in public, of having myh ideas on display and feeling confident enough to share them with anyone. Of course, very few people are actually reading them. So I have to say the resulting value for me over the past year has been the refinement of ideas that results from writing. And in the process I learned about the power and danger of swimming in the information torrent. So hopefully I start my second year a bit of a wiser guide to my colleagues who are just now considering diving in themselves.

I am still trying to figure out "sustainable blogging," a nice catchphrase solution that stands for the actual which is "how to get over the guilt and existential crises associated with failing to keep up a purely voluntary activity observed by few others." And I have to admit that for me, I invested most of my energy in edeas rather than skills. My technical skills sat on hold while energy went into figuring out teh big picture of education and technology. Now a year later I am in the same position looking a coming wave of demand on my depatrtment's technical skills. Where do I want to invest my energy?

I want to use this practice to help me grow and contribute without aggravating the obsessive tendencies of my mind. Does this mean I write often with cursory thoughts or write infrequently but with well-developed ideas? Do I blog for play or blog for professional development? Can I do both at the same time? Will I, as my wife say I have, "grow out of " my job and will the roots of that growth be the by-product of blogging?

These days there is no change without a buzzword. So Waterbug 2.0 is here. Now to figure out what it is.


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