Monday, November 24, 2008

Why should you blog? Sensibility.

At the agency, we have had an influx of The Atlantic, tons of them are lying around, (mostly in boxes on 11, FYI). I picked one up this morning for the article titles "Why I Blog" by Andrew Sullivan.

For anybody curious about the benefits of blogging or even what a blog is, you should definitely pick up a magazine and read the article. For the quick-tip minded, here are the excerpts I most enjoyed:

  • Blogging enables writers to express themselves in ways that have never been seen or understood before. It is to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.
  • The simple experience of being able to directly broadcast my own words to readers was an exhilarating literary liberation.
  • The key to understanding a blog is to realize that it's a broadcast, not a publication. It if stops moving, it dies.
  • The blogger is a node among other nodes, connected but unfinished without the links and the comments and the trackbacks that make the blogosphere, at its best, a conversation, rather than a production.
  • A blogger is like a host at a dinner party. He can provoke discussion or take a position, even passionately, but he also must create an atmosphere in which others want to participate.
  • People have a voice for radio and a face for television. For blogging, they have a sensibility.
The Culture Snack should be a dumping place for insights, ideas, and arguments so that we each can make our individual planning brands stronger. With an influx of the same information, we are forced to be creative, to put our own spin on things, and come up with our own opinions, validating them with links and comments, and then taking this content offline into a meeting with conviction from your likeminded community.

You can find this post and others at the Culture Snack.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

if i only knew...

But sometimes I don't. I need to be ok with that. I need to remain humble and cognizant of the people in the room with me. Sometimes I need to shut my mouth and LISTEN.

Listening is one of the greatest skills planners can have. I think I struggle with this fact because I want to make my voice heard (?). I think that's what people expect of me. Did they hire me to be quiet? But when I say something hurriedly, it always comes out wrong. I seem hasty and immature and unpolished. Gross.

This is totally free-thought writing. MIND MAP!!!!! One of the best things you can do to CONNECT IDEAS and TELL A STORY. See, I know what I'm doing, or at least what I need to be doing, I'm just not doing it.

Just do it. Nike had it right. Long live INSIGHT.