Amitai Givertz’s Blogversity Blog

I could not let the one millisecond anniversary of my not posting here — or the one year mark of my posting last, as you like it — pass without some remark. Call me sentimental, I don’t care.

Since my last writing I have started, stopped and abandoned one post too many.  Among my tomes of “unpublished rhyme” I have a fair bit that reflect on time and such things. For example…

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I guess these days I am easily distracted as evidenced by this post, one thing leading to another…

On researching cognitive bias I came across Enemies of Reason by Professor Richard Dawkins. The program originally aired on Channel 4. This discovery coincided with my browsing around on YouTube this time researching, um, YouTube. As a result I now know how to create a playlist and have the series of five YouTube clips roll in one continuous play. Another coincidence perhaps, but this could be what I was looking for for another project of mine. My God, that’s it! Eureka!

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It has been a good many years since I first got my hands on a copy of Intrapreneuring: Why you don’t have to leave the corporation to become an entrepreneur by Gifford Pinchot. Few books have had such a lasting impression on me. I have kept a copy close to hand in every office I’ve worked in since 1986.

If I had a dollar for every time I quoted from the book: “It is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission,” or warned a friend, “You don’t want to trigger the ‘corporate immune system,’ Bud,” I would be quite a few dollars better off than I am this morning. Of course, it would hardly be as I had billed it then, free advice!

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Like most of the southeast, Georgia is suffering from one of the worst droughts in living memory.

In a state with such a large population of believers it should come as no surprise that one popular response to this disaster of near-biblical proportions is to take it to the Lord in prayer.

Atlanta, Georgia: ‘Gov Sonny Perdue stepped up to a podium outside the State Capitol on Tuesday and led a solemn crowd of several hundred people in a prayer for rain on his drought-stricken State’ [Greg Bluestein, AOL]. The Governor was joined by other State elected officials [James Salzer & Jim Galloway, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution]. Here is man in trouble, forgetting that he himself has declared the separation of his Church from his State.

The age-old debate about God and State aside, as one who frequently stumbles in his own walk I found it disturbing to watch the Governor lead the gathering in prayer. I wondered, “Why don’t any of the faithful have umbrellas? You would think at least one of them would have turned out with a raincoat on, wouldn’t you?”

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Blog Action Day is designed to raise the collective voices of bloggers in a single refrain, this year about the environment.

Hmmm…If 15,000 or so bloggers who are taking part in this day of “mass participation” represent a pathetically small percentage of the total number of bloggers who regularly publish then the 15 million or so readers who could be potentially reached should not be overlooked. For some reason the cynic in me thinks it won’t be.

For my part I don’t want to create more waste in the blogging ecosphere by writing about something simply because everyone else is doing it, not really having anything to say except to note my wariness of anything that smacks of groupthink.

Besides, there will be so much to choose from that it seems the best I could do is find those posts I like best and comment on them, list them here perhaps. That and suggest you stop wasting energy too.

A little while ago I came across Blogversity – An Attempt at a Meme in my reader.

I followed the posts soon realizing that the recruiting bubble and the librarian bubble have [or had depending on your point of view] much in common. The blogs, the personalities, the relationships, the tensions, the idealism, even surviving the space — The NextGen Librarian’s Survival Guide, sound familiar? It all resonated with me. More, they write, read and link to really good stuff!

To the extent that I have gotten so much from following this meme I wanted to share it with you! Enjoy.

You wouldn’t know it from my posting frequency but I have been quite busy in my research. In an effort to develop an understanding for the recursive nature of blogging and its value, and reconcile Pierre Proudhon’s notion that “property is theft” with the persistent nuisance of walled gardens — or is it the perennial nuisance of persistent identity? — I am in danger of missing out on the increasingly popular YouTube gimme-juice phenomenon. Phew!

I came across this example from Cisco which illustrates the point — take your pick from any one of those above:

Ah, the human condition and the human network are becoming indistinguishable. What a bummer.

Julian Seery Gude is running his first marathon tomorrow. While that is a personal milestone in of itself, not to overlook his dedication of the run to remembered family and friends, what is most interesting to me is that Jules has managed to connect with people – drawn from both his birthday list and Rolodex – on a number of levels, most importantly perhaps, on an emotional level. More, Jules connects people in a way which nicely blurs the line between personal and business associations.

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For me, one of the absurd things about blogging is that as easy as it is to post and comment, tag and tinkle, everything else – I mean like the mechanics of blogging – is mind-numbingly hard. For example, I found New Tools for Social Media Optimization on the Online Marketing Blog which makes a compelling case to follow the incredibly simple step-by-step instructions for creating social bookmarks and assorted iconic blog-bling on one’s blog. Okay, I’m sold, now what?

Four hours after completed the first step – a thirty second process I might add – I’m still staring down the barrel of my WordPress blog, dashboard loaded, the theme editor fully cocked. I simply can’t pull the trigger. Cut and paste that code to where? The source code? The template? Bugger it! One way or the other I’m going to end up shooting myself! Where’s the Video Professor now, now that I actually need him? [Note to self: Add John Scherer to the The NewPR Wiki: CEO Blog List, he's a blogger.]

Ahem.

So, my blog remains un-optimized and antisocial. Like the blogger himself, a baby boomer who cannot boom. Pathetic. Yes, I know everything’s documented online; everything has a freakin’ forum, busy-bodies and know-it-alls. But all I want to know is where do I paste the code and what happens after you press the button that follows the ominous message:

“Are you sure you want to do that, Boomer? Changes cannot be undone. Go ahead, Boomer, make my day.”

Looking on the bright side, this blog is currently ranked 1,582,199 on Technorati with just one blog linked here – oh, yes, it’s this one – which means the likelihood of anyone arriving here and wanting to bookmark anything is so remote that it hardly matters. So, now that’s two absurd things about blogging. What a blast.

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