Technology: some blogging reflections

I got two comments on my last post: my husband commented verbally that my English is deteriorating and Cindy Hoong said the following:

"Blogging generally speaking is a voluntary job. Most bloggers use blog to achieve whatever they set out to achieve. I have read blogs from PhD students looking for feedback, or blogs looking to promote thier knowledge and eventually hope to get a dream job in the area of their expertise, and other bloggers looking for other goals etc.

I happened to know two persons that fit in these two examples respectively, PhD student and Dream job. AND NOW they both still blog, but occassionally. Recently I learned about two bloggers, I would say well known, decided to give up blogging. One already stopped (some hit I read somewhere that might have conflict-of-interest with his 'real' paying job), the other is slowly phasing out. SO, what are all these tell us? Blogging as a volunteer, generally will not last. Most bloggers drop out like flies in the very beginning, and those that persist generally would still drop out ONCE they achieved their goals. Goal is what keep blogger blogging. Take away their 'goal', there is not much to blog. Simple human behaviour. "

That makes me think about my blogging habit: will I stop when my goal is finished and what's my goal really?

In my six month of blogging, it's really become a habit to process what I read or hear by blogging about it. And so far I like taking that extra step to get my thoughts together because it supports my own learning process, like talking to people helps you to articulate your thoughts. I have never read the full blog since I started, but plan to do that soon. Since I started to tag my posts (a next project would be to get a search button), I also like using my own blog as an archive. For instance: we will have a meeting for the technical champions in ICT4D in Ghana on March 28/29 (during the eclipse!) with the objective of stimulating knowledge sharing between this particular group of practitioners and link the urban and rural expertise. While preparing that meeting, with the help of my delicious I could easily track down practical examples to get some inspiration (for instance this post about CARE's practical experiences), so my blog is first and foremost suiting my own information management. On the other hand, there are many interesting conversation and observations I have which I don't blog because of privacy reasons, which limits the depth of reflections as compared to an offline learning journal (but this is balanced by the positive feedback I get on my blog).

To improve my English, I will try to reread my posts before hitting my 'publish post' :)