Last week I was invited to speak at a local NetSquared meeting out in Tempe. Presenting on the topic of blogging forced me to take a step back to look at what I’ve been doing over the past seven years. I realized all of the technological connotations associated to blogging are irrelevant. Blogging is not about the web, rss feeds, or technology. That is just a means to an end. Blogging is about people, it’s about voices, blogging is all about you. Blogging is a medium for distributing both fact and opinion. It’s about discussion and connecting people in a relevant context. The technology just helps run the show.
In my presentation I briefly explained the concept of syndication via RSS and Atom - then touched on a high level overview of what a CMS system is used for. This was mainly to acknowledge the fact that not that many people are keen on the how or why of RSS. After demystifying the essential technologies involved, I focused on what blogging is really about. You can check out my slides below or view it in fullscreen.
- Disclaimer: You can click through them to proceed, but you can’t step back. This is due to a shortcoming in Keynote’s export to flash functionality. I wrote a viewer tool to load the .swf file created by keynote to preload it, but I could not interact with the movie itself as it’s an older format of SWF.
Alex Berger Says:
1:36 pmJun 17On the subject of people. One of the most powerful lessons i learned while doing MMOG based gaming was how a computer terminal changes the way people perceive their interactions. Suddenly, devoid of the face to face interactions and presented with an avatar people no longer become human. It was something that I personally didn’t understand because for me the technology may change, but the exchange is still the same. The individual on the other end still hears and reacts to what you say and how you exercise your voice. The avatars in the MMOG environment made it easy for me, at least, to remember that I was still communicating with real people and that the technology was just a tool. In other things, especially - as you mentioned - blogs it’s easy to forget the completeness of that communication and the power we wield. It’s also, I believe, very energizing information once you remind yourself as to the nature of the amazing tools at your finger tips.