Jan 16 2009
Benefits of Blogging
When the topic of blogging first came up at the beginning of this school year, several people in my program made rather disparaging comments. Not about me, specifically - but about “bloggers“.
It is not something that is regarded highly - and really, considering that we are in a Public Texts program, the whole Internet thing doesn’t seem to be given much attention/respect overall - the focus is still very much paper & books for the most part. Which seems rather short-sighted to me, but anyway…. perhaps we’ll get more into it this term - some of the possible essay topics for one course do include Internet related topics.
ANYway - that’s not what I was going to write about - what I meant to write about are the benefits of blogging.
Being paid for it is nice, for starters. I make a lot more here than I ever am likely to on my only non-today blog, which has so far earned a whopping .01c 
But aside from that - and from having met and made connections with some really cool fellow bloggers, and learned bunches about a wide variety of topics through Entrecard-dropping…
It is through blogging that I have been able to make contacts with a number of people that I otherwise would likely never interact with.
A while ago, for example, I got an email from someone at Inspiration.com asking if they could use some of what I’d written about their software on their site.
And today, I received an email from someone at Microsoft, who asked if we could set up a phone call to talk about teaching relational database to aviation management students.
Blogging also gives me a forum to express my frustration with certain companies that irk me, also … no idea if they actually ever find out about it - but the fact that Microsoft and Inspiration both pay attention to blogs gives me hope that perhaps companies like Aviva and NorDon (or NCS) might someday pay attention also. Won’t hold my breath on that, but hey …. hope is good :)
Now I shall have to make sure that I write really good blog posts detailing my experiences with both Aviva and NorDon, eh? Will do that later today, I think…. although probably post those over at flitting.org rather than here.
What has blogging done for you?
Big thing is that I’ve interacted with and found a number of interesting people with interesting, informative, thought-provoking or humorous contributions. It’s hard to feel bad about that.
I’ve also enjoyed sharing things that interest me and matter to me with this new community.
I’ve also found the interactions I’ve run into almost entirely positive, which I can’t always say about other places of connected on-line.
And getting paid for it rocks.
I really enjoy the interactive aspect, and intellectual stimulation
One of the reasons blogging has a bad press is because people hate listening to other people rambling/moaning about stuff. There’s this view that the blogger is an opinionated attention-seeking bighead just because of the attitude a few select bloggers.
If you can prove that you’re not trying to preach to people, you’re on the way to blog success.
Personally, I used blogging to help pass my Design degree - I used the format as a kind of online sketchbook.