After a little tearful wrestling with a very cranky MT database, I've decided to move my blog by hand, post-by-post, to its new location (here in this very spot). This has actually been a positive experience. In addition to being able to laugh at my own jokes (again), I've also done a "Clean Sweep" of sorts on the content. When I started MyNameIsKate back in the summer of 2003, I didn't really know why I wanted to blog. So I had some random snippets in there about laying off my best friend, being in love and the trials and tribulations of buying a condo (though I never posted that our lawyer's name was Howard Stern .. which I still find peculiar, and oddly comforting).
Fascinating minutiae, no doubt, but really more appropriate for my faux blue-leather, unicorn-adorned diary of my youth.
I have, I'm pleased to say, found a few posts that were content-ful, funny and provide some useful info, if not just a quick laugh. So these are getting slowly moved over. TypePad lets you back-date a post, which is great, so ultimately the original post dates are preserved. However, the interface for changing the date is painfully slow, so the whole process is taking much longer than I anticipated.
My BlogSweep [tm] (blogsweep.com has actually been registered, but it points to American Town Network) has got me to thinkin' about the nature of blogging. A few months ago when discussing my "dark blog" project at work and (again) musing on the raison d'etre for blogging, my friends Daniel and Lydia made come great comments about personal publishing and the potential influence we can have. Not all of us will be Woodward and Berstein, but we can have an impact on our own particular communities.
So perhaps it is not so much blogging as an activity, but the larger change that society is undergoing. There was a brief yet very telling column in Marketing Magazine a couple of weeks ago. Entitled "A New Buzzword: 'Hiving' Replaces 'Cocooning' as the New Social Trend" (subscription required to read full article), Serra Shular discusses the emergence of "hiving":
Now, it appears that cocooning is on its way out and social cocooning, or "hiving," is in. What's the difference, you ask? Hiving is about reaching out to others, not retreating; it's about friends and family, not just oneself; it's about finding comfort through social relationships and connection, not through seclusion and isolation.
While cocooning was about disconnecting from the outside world, hiving is about connecting to others from within our homes. And though the home is an integral part of hiving, hiving is not just about the home. The home has essentially become the hub for a range of activities involving other people, most significantly entertaining and socializing.
After discussing the rise in popularity of TV channels like HGTV and retailers like Pottery Barn, Shular goes on to discuss the role that technology plays in this social trend:
New technologies have had a profound effect on our consumption of entertainment. Most significantly, they have empowered us to create and customize what we consume and when.[emphasis mine]
This is the key .. this ability to create our own entertainment and to gather an audience for that entertainment. We are no longer restricted to our local tribes ... but can truly have global reach. The role that blogging plays and facilitates in this larger trend is what actually drives me to blog. That .. and the fame and fortune, of course.
I have also been hung up on the whole "personal vs professional" nature of blogs for quite a while. Is my blog "personal" (i.e. "Adventures in the Life of Kate"-esque) or "professional" (i.e. "A How-To Guide for Marketing on the Web"). I've come to realise that this question may not be the right question. Blog "A-listers" (mainly Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley insiders; thanks to Tara for the pointer) who started out having what I would call "professional" blogs have recently descended into a personal realm that I am surprised (and a little dis-heartened) by.
But the blog that has really shifted my perspective on this is Tara Hunt's HorsePigCow. Tara is a Toronto-based online marketing expert and Cluetrain Manifefsto advocate who is doing a bang-up job preaching "marketing as conversation". She writes about these conversations passionately. She writes about the need for companies to blog. And she writes about looking glamourous in the heat (a particular challenge in Toronto this summer!) And it is always true to her voice, as an online marketer and as a person.
So, no more angst for me. We are who we are when we blog. We're smart, funny, expert, professional and human. And our blogs should read that way too.
