August was the month for the 31days to a better blog challenge. Only there weren’t enough hours in the day to get 31days of tasks done with all of the other things in my life. So, I have extended into September, and it may take even longer.
It’s not that I haven’t been working on this every day. Blogging is pretty simple to do, but very difficult to do well. All of the little details that make a difference collectively take time. Commenting, for example, can be really important to building community. In order to comment effectively, you have to read and think about the blog you are commenting on. 
Takes time. And when you are reading a wide variety of blogs, there are endless links to follow and interesting paths to run off on. Soon enough, one cat is sitting on the keyboard reminding me her food is a higher priority while the others are trying cute, leg rubbing and other assorted tactics. They are pretty hard to resist.
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Week 1: Comment reflections
I’m not leaving my usual focus on all things visual, just adding a weekly report on an online blogging project I am participating in.
Commenting has always been somewhat sporadic for me. In phases. I read over 150 blogs, most of which I read the majority of the posts, so that alone is a major time commitment. I find when I am short on time, I skip the commenting. I’m also noticing I gather insights across the blogs I read, often making connections between tidbits that mash up with pieces offline. So the responses I find emerging don’t make sense attached to one place.If I knew ahead of time which tidbits were going to align, I might be able to write the type of posts rich with links that Sue Waters, Michele Martin, and Beth Kanter are so brilliant at doing. I seem to have a more retroactive thought alignment process rather than the anticipatory ones others seem to have that know what they might need and bookmark it for later.
This was easy. The comment challenge is full of blogs that are new to me. Since I train adults, I don’t follow K-12 blogs as a general rule, and the group has a lot of them. It’s been fun to explore them, they certainly have a different flavor. Not quite sure how to add value to the conversations on them yet. Instead I find myself telling those who are expressing anxiety about being behind that it’s OK. I guess I’m trying to find a common ground to share.
Like so many other things I discover on these challenges, the tracking software is a matter of strategizing how I am going to change the patterns of how I engage with daily practices. I center my online life around Google Reader and Mail, so things that integrate easily are the ones that I can adopt quickly. I have installed both co.mment and cocomment, but certainly have not fully adapted to them. And so far, I have found the RSS feeds from these tools to be confusing. Especially with so many similar conversations occurring across multiple blogs.
This is something I do with some regularity. What is interesting to me is how often bloggers ignore the questions I ask. Now I can understand if I ask another commenter a question that they may not see it. But as bloggers, we often get multiple notifications of comments. And I’m not talking just about the blogs with a huge amount of traffic. Leaves me wondering if it is the type of questions I ask, or the type of bloggers I’m asking.
By far the hardest task for me. This is totally contrary to my online behavior, and has sparked some of the deepest reflection. Offline, I certainly have no problem disagreeing with others. I suspect there are people around me who would say I voice my disagreement too much. So why is it so different for me online? I still haven’t figured it out, and I still haven’t disagreed.
It’s been nice to see the engagement with other commenters on the challenge. I have found it difficult to do this in the past. I read all/most of the comments on a post before I comment, and often try to engage with others. It’s almost like there are unspoken norms that develop on certain blogs. My favorites are the ones where the blogger and the readers talk freely and back and forth. I wonder what it takes to foster that norm?
The three things that jump out to me from the first week:
Categories: Blogging - Tags: comment08