A blogging experiment begins…

I don’t blog. I think blogs are for other people. That’s about to change…

I work for www.involve.org.uk on all things participatory (more about that later). You might think that would include online participation, and yes it does in the broad research sense – but  on a personal level I have consistently put off starting a blog of my own for these main reasons: 

1) Convinced I won’t have enough time or inclination to update it

2) What’s the use? I won’t have anything interesting or useful to say that hasn’t already been said by someone wiser.

3) Blogging is something other people do – I’m a commenter not a writer! It’s just ‘not me’.

So what made me change my mind?

Well, I met up with Tim Davies last week and had a very interesting chat about blogging, the barriers and the ways in which people use webtools in the context of real life. It got me thinking that it would be really useful to try out an experiment where somebody whose brain is not naturally prone to neatly categorise thoughts nor document them in a timely way (ie. me) to have a shot at blogging.

So, I’m beginning this blogsperiment with these goals in mind:

1) To share my own learning

2) To help better connect public participation people and related ideas

3) To add a dose of realism to the world of the already immersed bloggers out there

4) To have fun and share some personal interests

I will run it initially for three months, trying hard to connect with others and write useful regular posts  and then let’s see where we get to!

So, thanks to Tom for giving me the final push and thanks to Lisa Sabin-Wilson for writing WordPress for Dummies.

I’m starting for real on Monday 18th and will re-assess in three months time on May 19th.

Over and out.