Time to rebrand.
I’ve been feeling a malaise in my desire to blog lately. I’ve attributed this to a number of things. With the M.Ed. complete, I’ve been spending more of my time with the family. I don’t want my children to think of me as the man who spends time in the untidy computer room downstairs. I’ve also had to chance to become involved in a few nifty projects - co-designing a course with Alec, reworking a website in a two week timeframe, developing an online course at school and developing my role as an in-school intructional technology support teacher. OK, this is more than a few projects but they all kind of inter-relate.
I think that Twitter is another reason my blogging productivity is low, for two reasons. First is that twitter is distracting enough to keep me from forming any coherent thoughts. When asked to describe twitter, one of my responses is that twitter is crack for anyone with ADD.
But I’ve finally hit on a bigger reason that the blogging productivity has declined. It’s time to move on. When I moved to this blog after spending time as an omegageek and as an ant, I chose the name of the blog from the concept of stigmergy
Stigmergy is a method of indirect communication in a self-organizing emergent system where its individual parts communicate with one another by modifying their local environment.
I wanted to talk about learning as an activity of a network, and that the community of educational-technology bloggers formed a kind of stigmergic network in the way we modified ideas by that whole rip-mix-learn-feed paradigm. A lot of bloggers have joined in on that conversation. They are far more articulate than I am so lately I’ve tended to follow the conversation and leave comments on other blogs rather than initiate some of the conversation here.
I still want to follow and occasionally be a part of those conversations but it is time to move on (cue the Sarah Brightman and Andrea Boccelli music). I’m not sure if the change will be changing what is here or heading to a new location. I think that I want to move in the direction of having a more general topic blog. I’ll still be talking about education, technology and digital learning. I’m still deeply interested in those topics and my career ensure that I will continue to have things to say about them. I also want to talk about parenting, politics, photography, insomnia as a lifestyle and anything else that I think is worth writing about. My life, like anyone else’s, has many facets to it and they are all related. I want to write about all parts of my life, not just one.
But no cat diaries - you have my word on that.
Stay tuned for details.
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October 10th, 2007 at 09:51
I’m looking forward to the changes in the next while for you, Rob. I think my own rebranding helped me already … although I didn’t stray too far from where I was. However, at some point I like reading “people” rather than particular topics. In other words, you’ve got a fan for life, and you could pretty much talk about anything coherently, and I’ll be around joining in on the conversation.
OH … does this effect your Edtech Posse-ness in any way?
All the best Rob.
October 10th, 2007 at 10:07
Rob, I’m not sure what’s going on, but you and Alec and I seem to be experiencing similar feelings. The tag line of my own blog “Building Social Capital One Geek at a Time” seems to have fallen by the wayside. Last week I blogged about how much I enjoy Fall and The Vinyl Cafe stories and it felt great. I see my own “rebranding” occurring in the very near future.
I love forward to reading what you have to say on a multitude of topics, just as I have when you’ve written about education.
October 10th, 2007 at 18:43
Alec - you put it really nicely. I want to write as a person instead of on a topic. As for edtech posse-ness, I wouldn’t think of giving it up. That might end up being my main outlet for edtech stuff.
Heather - I really enjoyed that post about Fall and the Vinyl Cafe. I hope you include many more like this in your new brand.
October 13th, 2007 at 01:34
Rob, it was so nice meeting you at BarCamp. I hope we can meet again. Your blog is up for renovation… good luck with that, I’m sure it will be a fun project. The audio you taped for the podcasts when I mentioned Molly and Tara, is it possible that I could get a copy?
Talk to you soon.
October 18th, 2007 at 05:56
Rob: I resonate with your struggle to balance family time with blogging, and also write multi-dimensionally rather than just about education or educational technology issues. Life does seem to change in seasons, so perhaps you are entering or wanting to enter a different season of blogging. I think my wife would like it if I entered a season of no blogging. I’d be crazy to ignore her, of course, and I’m not… We did an “evening technology fast” last December that she wants to repeat again this year. It was great on many levels. Balance is hard to find. I’ll be curious to know how things continue to change for you in this regard…. Thanks for sharing your journey.
October 25th, 2007 at 23:17
[…] « Rebranding 25 10 […]
October 29th, 2007 at 12:36
[…] The second reason is restlessness. Way back in 2003 (that feels like such a long time ago) Alan Levine noted that many edu-blogs seem to be abandoned after about a year. If that is the case, I’ve put in more than my time here. This incarnation of my blogging started in June of 2004 after trying other formats for a couple of years, and I just have a feeling that it is time to move on. When I’ve moved before, I have changed the focus, and I think it’s time for me to do just that. […]