Ideas of March: Write and Read
In the first instance, this realisation that two-way information exchange is really important is quite personal. I spoke at, and then attended the rest of, the 4th DayCamp4Developers virtual conference. One of the speakers, Paul Jones, was recommending a series of business books. Now, I have some of those books, as well as a good number of what I would call “visionary” technical books, on my shelf. I bought quite a few of them when I went freelance, but these excellent books (or their digital equivalents) sit here, unread. Although I read a lot of blogs and other sites, I rarely sit and read a book. Books have room for bigger ideas and joined up thinking, like the difference between a tweet and a blog post, but on a scale that is yet more macro. Therefore I take on as an idea of March that I will take the time to read; to feed my brain with new, bigger ideas, as well as just dump out the contents of it onto this blog.
Another important element of the reading-and-writing idea (nothing to do with readwriteweb although that’s a great site) is to partake in a conversation. For me, blogging is not about me writing such that others can admire it; blogging is the opening line in a conversation that I hope will keep us all engaged until they are turning out the lights in the bar, hoping we will leave. Whether you have write a blog, read others’ blogs, or have lost yours under a few layers of dust, engaging in that conversation is how we share ideas and learn from one another. A great many of the posts on this site are made better, and sometimes factually correct, by the contributions in the comments. If you only ever read content in your feed reader, you are missing out on more than half of the conversation.
So my pledge is this: I will continue to write, but also to read and expand my horizons. I will engage in the dialogue of and between blogs, reading comments and adding my own where I have something to say. Whether you have a blog or not, I hope you’ll join me in widening our worlds by engaging in the two-way conversation: blog; read blogs; read comments; and comment.
Thanks for reading, more posts about blogging are under the #ideasofmarch hashtag on twitter.
The tone of your article, on being a better reader, shares a lot in common with my own Ideas of March post’s theme. I’d like to go a step further and recommend that being a good reader also means sharing what you’ve found. We forget too often, but I think it’s important that we remind ourselves that if we read all the way through a blog post, we should probably share it. After all, if it was interesting enough to hold our attention until the end, others will probably enjoy it.
I guess you could say it’s my case for being more active about sharing.
I came across your site because I read Drew McLellan’s blog and he posted about ideas of march. I looked at the hashtag on twitter and picked your blog at random. I think it’s a good idea, and I’ve had this page and Drew’s open in my browser for a few days. However my blog posting/personal brand buiding philosophy is “do it if you can be bothered”. I have lots of ideas, and draft blog posts, but I can’t be bothered to get round to polishing them off that often, as it’s a bit too much like work. However, I wish you and other #ideasofmarch people all the best and I’ve subscribed to your blog. (Not that I haven’t blogged recently, but it was a post about Data Protection, so not very inspring.)