Just Writing, Really
Don’t let newfangled ways of communicating scare you
How do you know if you’re a geek?
That was the question posed by Intellagirl, a brunette with a fiery red streak teaching a session at a recent conference. By the way, the “fiery red streak” was part of her hairstyle – not her personality. From what I could tell, Intellagirl seemed quite friendly.
But back to the geek question, which was sort of an ice-breaker before Intellagirl got on to business of teaching us the importance of “Conversational Media.”
I sat there, shaking my head “no” as she went through about half a dozen questions to see if the participants in her session qualified for geekdom. I silently kicked myself when I realized too late that D&D stood for “Dungeons and Dragons.” Of course, I should have known that.
So it went through most of blogIndiana, a recent conference sponsored by Indiana University’s School of Informatics at IUPUI. I basically felt like a fish out of water.
Terms like blogosphere and PPC strategy were tossed around. People spit out sites that apparently all bloggers were familiar with: Digg, StumbleUpon, Sphinn, Feedburner and Twitter. Several times during the conference, I had the thought, Uh, can you spell that?
My one moment of comfort came when Ruth Holladay, my boss during part of my stint at The Indianapolis Star, stopped her train of thought after mentioning the word “blogging” for, like, the 10th time. Ruth, who has built up a large following with her blog, paused ever so briefly to say, “Blogging is just writing really.”
Thank you Ruth for giving me that perspective.
As a new blogger and participant in IW’s “Let’s Get Fit!” fitness challenge at indianapoliswoman.com, I’ve had just considered myself writing for the Web until I attended the conference. It opened my eyes to the many dimensions of blogging, whether on a personal or a corporate level.
Yet, Ruth’s comment help bring me back to that basic realization that no
matter how you slice it, whether you’re blogging, instant messaging, texting or
getting LinkedIn, you’re still just communicating.
As a writer and editor, I love hearing people’s stories, thoughts and ideas.
And if blogging is another way to accomplish that, then I’m ready to sign up for residency in the blogosphere.
