new dog old trick

BlogNashville is open for registration

Link: BlogNashville.

The BlogNashville event is open for registration.  The program spans Thursday, May 5 through Saturday, May 7, with May 7 the main conference day.  The program for the 7th is also now posted - looks like lots of interesting topics.

Weblog as memory aid

Of all the reasons to blog that I've seen, I don't remember anyone mentioning a blog as a form of memory aid - sort of annotated bookmarks. I've found that this is a useful way to think about certain posts - things that I am interested in sharing and commenting upon, but also things that I want to be able to find again quickly. For some things, I find that the context provided by a post is better than the context-free reminder provided by a bookmark. I mean, haven't you had the experience of clicking on some bookmark that you've set and looking at the site or page that comes up and going - huh? what was I thinking when I bookmarked this.

Information Force Multiplier

Jeff Nolan, one of my favorite venture capitalist bloggers, has an interesting piece on the internet and blogs as a CEO's information source multiplier. Jeff Nolan: Information Force Multiplier

I think Jeff is right about CEO's being able to use their employee's weblogs as a way to monitor the health of the organization. I suspect in high tech industries like software, this is already reality. I'd also be willing to wager a small bet that in a few years time the healthiest and the sickest companies will be those with the heaviest volume of employee blogging with all those mediocre places in the middle mostly silent. Jeff says he's gone away to think about this some more; we'll check back and see what he comes up with.

Weblog maintenance

I'm spending a little time this morning doing weblog maintenance. Blog-entropy has set in around the lists of weblogs I read, books, and music. Time for a little spring list cleaning. So far what that amounts to is adding more weblogs to the lists of ones I read and separating out the business/econ related weblogs from all the other stuff. I'll have to get to my music lists and reading lists later.

Spring cleaning does seem appropriate - spring is in full bloom here in southern California. My azaleas are looking great this year and not yet in full bloom. Almost everything else is looking great. Walking the dog around the neighborhood means walking past one yard full of flowers, and associated smells, after another. It's interesting to walk the same route in day-time and then again at night. In the day, you focus on the flowers: the colors and shapes of the plants; at night, when it's too dark to really appreciate the colors, the smells dominate the experience. At least for me - smells seem to be the main thing for my dog at any time, but then I think she's smelling other things than I.

Blinding flash...this takes discipline

I started weblogging partially to have a place to think through or present my opinions on various issues but also to create a daily reason to write. I'm never going to finish any of the half dozen writing projects that I've noodled on if I don't develop the discipline to sit down and write on a regular, preferably daily, basis. Good idea, not so good execution so far. I'll do better.

New Dog - beta

In my first post I declared this blog to be an alpha release. After posting for a few days and decoding the mystery of blogscurities like trackback, I'm comfortable enough to escalate the release level to beta. I anticipate a week of serious blogging will push me over the line to production status. Now on to bookmarklets!

Who says there are no editors on blogs?

The immediacy of blogging and the lack of editors in weblogging has been a hot topic of discussion among the blog world's big thinkers. See here on Kausfiles for more on the topic. But I couldn't even get this thing named by myself. I was ready to name this blog "old dog new trick" but my wife jumped in with "I don't want to think of you as old - how about new dog old trick instead". Hmmm. Maybe an editor isn't always a bad thing.