Don't blog the cat unless

Ed tech guru Stephen Downes, author of Stephen's Web, left a very good response to yesterday's post Don't Blog the Cat. He rightfully took me (and Kathy Sierra) to task about the advice to limit the personal in blogs. In part he writes:

What distinguishes the blog media from the traditional media is the idea that each expression has a point of view. Our knowledge of a concept or an event is  obtained from combining these points of view.

Knowing about the blog author helps us understand that point of view. When I say "I saw a cat on the streets of Madrid" the meaning is different when you know that I am a cat person and love cats.

He's right, of course and he made me think. (I hate it when that happens.) Blogging more than perhaps any other medium is about the individual perspective and experience that the blog writer brings to the page (screen?) that gives a blog its value.

But for me anyway, it is really more complex than that. The reason Sierra's post struck me perhaps, was because on the morning I re-read her post, one of my cats upchucked all over the bathroom floor, and I thought about publicly asking if anyone else noticed that cats seem to regurgitate twice the volume of food they've eaten - a Seinfeldian sort of observation.

But what I could not do was figure out any way that this observation made a point about technology, education or even life - other perhaps than it's just one damn thing after another. Amusing in a gross sort way, perhaps, but there was no way I could stretch this into a story that made much of a point.

This might be the distinction between purely personal writing (blogging about the cat), and using personal experience as a source for writing for an audience. There needs to be a point. If my cat's actions can teach, inform, enlighten, inspire or even simply raise meaningful questions, the cat becomes a proper subject for the blog. If not, why am I wasting my reader's time and attention?

This is the same way I feel about jokes in presentations - if they don't make some sort of point, they're just a cheap way of entertaining rather than informing.

So thanks, Stephen, and in way of apology, here is a picture of my cat:

 

Don't blog the cat and other virtues

One of the best/worst features of Google Reader is the ability to "star" blog entries for easy retrieval. My list of starred items usually runs between 15 and 50 entries that I just know I'll get back to some day.

Among those starred items have always been a few Kathy Sierra "Creating Passionate Users" posts. (I wish she would start writing again.) Anyway, I re-read her post "Seven Blog Virtues (for a Global Microbrand)" and was glad I did so. (The post is actually a downloadable slideshow in pdf.)

Sierra has always been about marketing and increasing one's visibility (her job), but most of the virtues she writes about in this post just seem so applicable to all of use who write for other professionals about our profession regardless of medium. Her "virtues" and a few memorable snippets:

You should always blog for yourself, but if you want more readers, you should also blog for them.

Virtue 1: Be Grateful Our readers’ time and attention is a gift. Out of all the possible things that our readers could be doing (or reading), the fact that anyone comes to our blog at all is incredible. We must be grateful and try to give something of value in return.
Virtue 2: Be Humble
Virtue 3: Be Patient
Virtue 4: Be Generous Teach people to do what you do. Don’t hoard your “secret sauce.”
Virtue 5: Show Respect Don’t post for quantity, post for quality. If you don’t have something that you believe is worth the reader’s time, think twice about posting.
Virtue 6: Be Motivating
Virtue 7: Be Brave If everyone loves everything you write, it’s probably mediocre.

Don't blog the cat. It's not about you.

As an English teacher, I always reminded my student writers to keep purpose and audience in mind when writing. It's advice I ought to give myself now and then as well. Too often I find myself writing for simply personal amusement rather than writing to help my readers or the profession.

But it will be tough not to "blog the grandsons" and forgive me if I slip now and then.

Sierra's post is worth a look... 

Picture from Kathy Sierra's  "Seven Blog Virtues (for a Global Microbrand)" slide show.

For an op-ed POV see the next day's post. 

TechProof column

My April TechProof column, It's Delightful, it's del.icio.us, is available on the Education World website. In fact all my TechProof columns are there.

I like the logo.