Blogging on blogging

I remember the early days of blogging – back in the mid/late 90s when I used to read Dave Winer’s Scripting News and Jorn Barger’s Robot Wisdom regularly. It was actually a bit rubbish: most blogs spent a huge amount of time discussing the value of blogging.

It’s not really changed. If you could somehow get information about such a meta-question out of, say, Technorati, I’d bet a pint that you’d find that the runaway most-blogged-about topic is … blogging. There are nuances in every field: no doubt the numismatic blogoverse discusses subtly different issues to the furry community. But it’s basically the same argument, over and over. Don’t you hate that?

I certainly do … and yet here I am doing just that on my own blog, in response to Martin Weller asking Is Blogging A Good Use Of Time?

He discusses some of the benefits and comes – unsurprisingly! – to the conclusion that those benefits do justify the use of time.

I agree with all his benefits, but my take is slightly different. I’ve had a personal blog for ages, but I put off (work) blogging for as long as possible for the ‘time sink’ reason.

I started this blog because it was becoming more and more indefensible to be doing my job without blogging.

Part of my job is to track new technology and see how it can be harnessed to support OU teaching. To do that, I need to be part of that technology world. And in that world, if you don’t blog, you don’t exist. Simple as that.