Structured Blogging: Podcast with John, Alex and Marc
2 Hour
41 Minute
PM
Big thanks to Josh and Alex for hosting a podcast call with me and Marc Canter.
We did it with a skype conference. I've been doing skype voice conferences for about a month with Joern and Uli in Berlin and I've never had any trouble. But today my internet connection F'd me and I disconnected. Everybody was kind enough to disband the call and reconnect for me once... which was appreciated.
I was only there for about half of a one hour scheduled podcast. Sorry guys.
We got through the basics of structured blogging and we were about to get into some of the differences between my perspective and Marc's when my internet disconnected.
I alluded to some of it in a recent post. Marc seems focused on having many people blog the same thing (like a movie) so that collectively our society is sharing views, connecting and painting a shared picture.
And I'm board with that vision, but I believe that there's another half of the picture of structured blogging which doesn't involve the network or society. It happens when one person logs the same thing over time. Like a runner tracking run performance (Marc loves my running analogies, btw :). Or a diabetic tracking blood glucose. These things give you your own record of one thing which you can then chart, graph, search. This is a personal value proposition, outside of the network.
And I know it's real because people have been tracking things for thousands of years.
I just want to make sure that this personal value story is told along with the network vision. Much of the pushback on SB these days is either "why would a person spend the time to track X" or "why should they share X with the world once they track it."
Both questions have answers when you de-emphasize the network and emphasize the value of personal data mining. Much of the activity we see on Reger.com is via private blogs where people track and graph things that are important to them... without ever sharing them.
Granted, it's not as sexy as the network vision. I want to get to the network vision just like Marc, but I want to take baby steps and focus on user value a little more right now. Reger.com has charts and graphs and saved searches for structured blogging today.
As always, great to hear Marc's voice. He's a speaking dynamo and commands attention. His advocacy for structured blogging is welcome, necessary and appreciated. I hope to learn from him so that one day I can be as good an advocate for whatever it is I'm advocating. Marc's big time! And he's a kind person, willing to engage people who disagree with him.
And finally, thanks to Alex and Josh who are doing an amazing job of bringing this Web 2.0 thing into focus. It's no simple task but they're applying an academic/journalistic mind and methodology to collecting opinions. Keep up the great work guys!
Not sure when they'll post it but I'll let you know.
SoCon08