RT @davebriggs Ideas, conversations and artists [link to post]

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I think Public Strategist asked after the event whose careers had been enhanced by blogging, and I think that’s true for the three of us commenting here at least. I suppose I’m interested because I reckon there’s something particular in the format and culture of regular, interactive blogging which you don’t get when digitally engaging in other ways. Quite often, it’s all rather lumped together with Twitter and other social media and has a bad name as a rather self-indulgent, slightly naive pasttime. There’s more to it than that, clearly, and we need to explain that to people in govt I think.

@Neil: ‘what could be worse…’ etc – how so? You want a big centralised platform?

A big part of what’s appealing about blogging is personal publishing, and is there actually anything wrong in that?

Further, on the blogging front, one of the people I was thinking about when I wrote the original post was Andrea DiMaio, whose blogging perfectly hits the mark when it comes to analysis and comment on government techy stuff. Do we have an Andrea in the UK? I’m not aware we do…and I think we need one.

But my purpose in saying that focusing on blogging was wrong was because I did not want to put people off joining in because of the ‘b’ word. Also, a lot of the discussion of the original post was centered on blogging about blogging, or blogging about social media. What I was getting at was a wider discussion about how we talk about government and ideas, without getting bogged down in specific social media issues or holy wars about whether Blogger is better than Tumblr (or whatever).

RT @davebriggs Ideas, conversations and artists [link to post] #ukgc10

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RT @davebriggs: Ideas, conversations and artists [link to post] < - moving beyond unconferencing to learning and action

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What’s interesting about (official) blogging in particular – even more so than social networking or Twitter which are generally more atomised and personalised – is that it provides a publishing channel for individuals and teams to the wider world. Some find this concept terrifying and unmanageable (‘how would we cope with all the feedback?’ ‘What about the p0rn?’), some find it professionally terrifying (‘but I’d be exposed personally’, ‘my press office/manager would hang me out to dry – or more likely stop me before I start”) and a bigger chunk still can’t square the time and effort required to blog with the objectives of their role. These same people would write articles and present at conferences, but struggle to see the value in putting it on a blog, to reach an unknown, international, public audience. Of course, if you put valuable stuff out there, interesting people you’d never normally meet provide you value in return. But we’re a way away still from that realisation.

The argument for personal blogging is a bit more straightforward: build a reputation, get connections, share your projects, socialise. Frankly, I’m still not sure whether the murkiness of the rules is a help or a hindrance to personal blogging. We muddle on.

So you and Stefan and Dom and David are right to point to the bigger problem. But there’s something special and powerful about blogging which deserves exploration in its own right, I think.

Ideas, conversations and artists [link to post]

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