Archives for October 2013

Adagio For Strings is playing and my head is somewhere other than here. Lost in thought about the life I just left behind in Texas and the one I am rejoining here I am trying to sift and sort through it all.

It used to be when I heard this piece my head would go to Platoon because that was what I associated the music with. I remember when the movie came out and how many of the Vietnam Vets talked about it. I was all of 18 and too young to realize that many of those Vets weren’t particularly old and that they were sorting out their lives too.

Now I hear Adagio for Strings and think about the concert after 9/11 and I can’t not see the Towers in my mind or think about all that happened that day and all that has come since. Can’t help remembering what it was like to be a new father and to wonder what it would mean for my children.

Blog Comments Are On Life Support

Life is a series of transitions and choices. That is not an indictment or value judgment, just a comment based upon perception. So is that subhead.

My perception is that blog comments are on life support. There are so many other platforms and places that are taking away from blog comments it is hard to envision a time when they will recover.

Is that a bad thing? Well, it depends on your thoughts and perceptions.

I am not saying that no one comments on blogs any more because it still happens but now it takes more work to make it happen. Unless you are one of the popular bloggers you probably don’t get as many comments as you used to. I know that I don’t and that most bloggers I know feel the same.

Now when I see posts with significant amounts of comments it is usually because there is a community surrounding that blog or because there is some sort of controversy tied into it.

Sometimes I think about what I can do to change that. Sometimes I think about writing about how I hate the holiday season or why there isn’t a War on Christmas to see what kind of comments I can stir up and then I remember that I write about those things every year.

Should We Care/Do People Care?

We are at the 9.5 years of blogging mark. I mention it because I have to take that into consideration. Have to look at my perception and recognize that it impacts what I do and think.

Have to recognize that I don’t care about comments the way I once did and that writing for the sake of writing is far more important. When I don’t get to write it feels like I am choking. You know, it is that thing that happens when you don’t get your air. Sometimes you don’t get it because you are truly cut off and sometimes it a temporary thing, ya know like having a shirt collar that is too tight.

Should we care about the reduced number of comments? I don’t know. I see some outstanding conversations elsewhere. I see and participate in dad blogger groups and marketing/writing professionals where the conversation is stellar.

There is a lot to be said for those.

They help build relationships and provide for some great learning and those are real benefits. That is the kind of thing that makes this blogging business special.

Words Should Move You

I still operate off the same basic premise that words should move you. So I suppose that when I ask whether we should be concerned about whether we receive comments or not the answer is that if I don’t move you to comment I am not getting the job done.

And there you have proof of the contradiction of life. From the writer who writes whether you read or not. Life is still a series of contradictions and choices and it is up to us to make of it what we will.

We can choose to persevere when things are more challenging or we can drop our swords and fall upon them. Just don’t expect me to drop my sword because I never have learned/accepted that I can’t beat the dragon.

Comments aren’t dead, they are just scattered around hither and thither.

“Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Ulysses- Tennyson

Editors Note: The post below originally ran here. A few years later I think we are still facing some of the same challenges as before. Some conferences are populated with large numbers of the same attendees and speakers year after year because of financial concerns.

Not everyone can afford to attend or speak. Finances play their role and in some areas so does the buddy system in which people work together to make sure their friends are part of the club.

This is not meant to be a blanket indictment of all bloggers/speakers/conferences/brands because that would be unfair, wrong and inaccurate.

But it is worth taking a hard look at what is going on and asking who is benefiting, not because we are trying to out/expose anyone but because there is value in trying to figure out how the system works and who benefits.

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The problem with blogging conference speakers is that we expect them to be experts on a particular topic and most of the time they aren’t. We sit in our chairs and hope that at least one member of the panel will be able to shed some insight and distill their words of wisdom and oftentimes it doesn’t happen.

It doesn’t happen because they aren’t experts in the field. They don’t necessarily know more than you do about blogging and how to be successful at it. Sometimes they are far less capable and talented than you are but the difference between them you is that when the call for speakers went out…they answered.

They stood up, raised their hands and said that they would fill a time slot. Bully for them and boo for you.

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You can call this Digital Envy if you wish. Blog Envy is real and every time I write about it I receive a ton of feedback. In part that is because bloggers love to talk about blogging but this isn’t about that. This is about my frustration with conferences that require a substantial registration fee to go hear people who aren’t experts in the field speak about it. I can’t say that I blame the speakers for volunteering their time. If you are trying to build a name for yourself this is one way to do it. You gain good exposure and you obtain a new line for your resume.

My grandfathers would have told me that this is all narishkeit and they are probably right. Narishkeit: (nar-ish-kite) foolishness (a nar is a fool) Why should any of this matter to me and is there a real reason for me to care.

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
Teddy Roosevelt “Citizenship in a Republic,”Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

Old Teddy, he of speak softly and carry a big stick fame is correct and I am duly chastised. It is easy for me to poke holes in the fabric of the conference, to complain, critique and comment upon the shortcomings. It is harder to answer the call for speakers with a 500 word essay on what I want to talk about and why it would be a mistake not to include me in the line up.

And the beauty of hindsight is that it allows me to say that it was a mistake not to solicit a spot forBlogworldLA. I could have done so and I didn’t and I take responsibility for that but that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe that there is a problem with speakers. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think that some people are filling space nor does it mean that I am envious.

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There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Essay on Self Reliance- Ralph Waldo Emerson

And lest you think that I take myself too seriously I would have asked the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain to open up for me. I would have told them to play the theme to Shaft and then walked up, cool as can be and begun speaking.

Or perhaps I would have opted for this one