Common Craft Blog
Tim Bray at Northern Voice
By leelefever on February 19, 2005 - 10:37am
The central theme is that Blogging is like soup but way more complicated. For Tim Bray’s talk, “participant participation is arduous and compulsory.†(Robert Scoble just showed up, and Tim Bray stops and says There he is! Yay!)
Blogs are like soup. Soup making objectives: Nutritious, Tasty, Attractive.
At Sun over 1000 now blog the open the gates on blogging in 2004. By and large it’s been very successful and a learning experience.
Principles of Good Blogging:
1. Write what you know. Everyone is an expert in a small number of things.
2. Listen. The mythology of blogging is about putting things into the world, but the other part of that is hearing the world- listening. Listen, then write. If you run out to the world with your message without listening, you have a good chance of being wrong.
3. Link often. You owe it to your readers to link to others. Doing lots of linking is likely the single best way to get readers.
4. Post often. Like many things, the way to get good is to practice, plus more posts means more readers.
5. Correct yourself. Bloggers are different when we’re wrong, we can undo the damage when we publish. We can react in a way that makes it better.
6. Generalize. Almost everything starts more general and moves to specific.
7. Flame judiciously. One of the things that gives conversation flavor is anger. He sees no reason not to share your feelings. Reasonable people never change the world.
8. Spell-check. The quality matters, though Marc Canter disagrees, so does Jeremy Wright.
9. Look good.
10. Balance hubris and humility- arrogance smells- it stinks and drives readers away.
11. Be Brief. It’s hard to write a short entry
12. Be intense. A cool, dispassionate narrow tone, almost never works.
13. Don’t tell secrets. The blogosphere is not a million writers, it’s a million listeners. If you post something secretive, people will know, like high school- except the web never forgets.
14. Don’t ruin your life. There are a lot of ways you can get in trouble. The question is, why is the media writing about people getting fired for blogging? Think they are worried?
15. Don’t blog on command. People shouldn’t be pushed to blog. The people that should blog will blog.
16. Late add: Be sincere
17. Late add: Never Lie
18. Late add: Write for pleasure
Marc Canter: Has it helped Sun?
Tim: Yes. We are now a blue suit company (we come in the front door) and it helps us be more grassroots.
I’m not sure the humming thing worked in this group, everyone hummed to some degree on everything.
Tags: northernvoice
Tim Bray at Northern Voice
8. As long as it doesn't get in the way of your voice and your authenticity, spelling doesn't bother me.
Tim Bray at Northern Voice
Spelling doesn't bother me either. I think it's authentically human. I guess the argument could be that with such easy to use tools, it shouldn't be an issue. I just want the message.
Tim Bray at Northern Voice
#16 Be sincere. It would have been interesting if we had more time to discuss this further at the conference. I would have labelled it along with authenticity as a strong point. Given the mind set of every individual, one of the remarkable things about blogs is that you tend to go back to those that are sincere, original and authentic. That is good blogging.
Tim Bray at Northern Voice
#7 - I don't agree. Not many people can flame and get away with it. Most often it results in a heap of trouble for the flamer. It's possible to criticise in a calm way and still get your point across. Being personal never helps anything.
I'm one of those who thinks good spelling is important. It means you are taking your writing reasonably seriously and will help retain readers.
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