Blogs are Conversations

Last night I had the pleasure of meeting both Stowe Boyd (A Working Model, GetReal) and Judith Meskill (Social Software Weblog, Knowledge Notes) in real life, that is away from the keyboard and face to face. Interestingly enough, despite never having met in person before, the conversations were detailed and familiar.

As it turns out, a great deal of internalization occurs as one subscribes and imbibes the daily thoughts of another person. Conversations begin to happen not as spoken dialog but instead as written screenplays. As I explained last night what a blog was to one of the other folks there, the best description I could provide was it was a personal journal with discussion -- a flattened forum if you will. This definition seemed to work enough to convey the general point. However, when pressed who wrote things, I noted that there is usually only one author, however, there are often times when multiple authors create. I did mention, though, that comments were usually open, which, is another form of authorship. The last form mentioned was this screenplay effect where one author used their own blog as a pulpit for responding to others -- a virtual game of tag as it is.

Indeed, our conversations last night continued where the blogs had ended. There was no discussion about the source of the subject matter as everyone already "knew" what we were talking about. There was never a need, though we might have out of habit, mentioned that the information was in the blog. Perhaps we mentioned it more so for those around us that weren't part of the online conversation and, now, somewhat bewildered.

One of the last comments on the "blogging thing" was that it seemed to disjointed. I had to disagree, however. My main assertion is that blogs have their own DNA, derived from the wills and motives of their authors. Although topics range, categories provide roadmaps to the thought process. This also serves as one of the biggest challenges for new readers. Understanding the though process (a.k.a. why it's not disjointed) requires, at a minimum, more context. Unfortunately, blogging today generally lacks the visual and informational pointers to generate context, instead reporting only on the "timely".