FRIDAY FIVE SURVEY – WHY I BLOG

Just found out about Friday Five so I thought I’d try it out.

1. Explain why you started to journal/blog.
Personal reasons: I love to write and need regular practice to do it better, I love to share ideas, I learn best by writing stuff down
Business reason: I’m a Knowledge Officer for a large company by day, and wanted to explore whether blogs might be a better way to share business news and knowledge as well. Jury’s still out on that.

2. Do people you interact with day to day or family members know about your journal/blog?
Kind of the reverse – some of the people who’ve discovered my blog are people I now interact with day to day. So far, most people at my work have no idea about this, and that’s probably just as well. My family know but so far aren’t really into it.

3. Do you have a theme for your journal/blog?
Primary theme is supposed to be environmental awareness/activism, with politics, economics, music/film/TV/lit/arts, science, and business innovation as secondary themes. Sometimes, however, events overtake the best laid plans, so liberal politics has been the de facto primary theme so far.

4. What direction would you like to have your journal/blog go in over the next year?
No idea. If it makes me a better writer, that will be enough. If it makes me a more informed, sensitive, unselfish, humble, active, mature, balanced person, that will be gravy. If it in some way touches someone else and as a result makes the world a slightly better place, that would be awesome.

5. Pimp five of your favorite journals/blogs.
Too hard to cut it down that much. Instead, I’d like to publicly thank those that have graciously and selflessly helped me get this blog launched (two weeks old today), especially The Raven and CharlyZ (gracias). Also like to urge some of the poets and essayists who write extraordinary and beautiful things, usually with little or no recognition, to please keep doing it — you may not get as much attention as other bloggers, but we need you. And anyone with ideas on how to save Salon, please let them know.

5 Responses to FRIDAY FIVE SURVEY – WHY I BLOG

Rayne says:

February 17, 2003 at 07:58

Are you familiar with Windley’s Enterprise Computing Weblog? http://www.windley.com — CIO for State of Colorado blogs to share knowledge.
Dave Pollard says:

February 17, 2003 at 09:05

Rayne: Thanks, I’ll keep an eye on this. I’m looking for blogs focused more on the content side of knowledge management (communities of practice, knowledge sharing culture, knowledge taxonomy etc.) while most the ones I’ve seen are focused on the IT side. Interestingly, the British k-logs seem to be more content/culture focused than the N.Am. ones. But none of them is as entertaining as yours – we should all have the courage to blog more about what we feel, and about the everyday occurrences in our lives, since that provides a context that makes posts about what we think so much richer. -/- Dave
Rayne says:

February 17, 2003 at 10:08

If Windley weren’t a CIO, it’d be a better example; unfortunately for the cited purpose, the content is IT-based, content can’t be separated from the architecture since they are one and the same. As an IT project manager, a blog-based body of knowledge accessible by my team members would have been a blessing. Too bad I couldn’t use one in the enterprise I supported. Project management software misses this component, assumes projects operate in a vacuum defined by scope and timeline; having access to historic practices, cultural info, institutional knowledge at hand and discussed from different perspectives would certainly have improved my team’s ability to perform.Not having worked in the Legal profession for some time, I wonder what’s been developed in the past 5 years to manage case work including document populations…?
Charly Z says:

February 17, 2003 at 10:23

Thanks for the mention, Dave. You’ve had a solid start here, and I’m sure we’ll see many more interesting writing from you. As for saving Salon, I say let’s take it guerrilla: Throw everyone with a 6-digit wage out, move the servers to some extra-cheap real estate and turn all editors into writers.
Dave Pollard says:

February 17, 2003 at 13:27

Charly: Since my Dad was a journalist, and I know how hard it is to make a living at it (“you mean someone would actually pay me to do this?), I’m not sure I’d go that far. I actually e-mailed the top brass at Salon with some ideas for refinancing, reorganizing & strategic funding partnerships. Michael O’Donnell either knows something or is kidding himself, since he said “Salon will be fine.”