It my intention that thought?horizon be more than simply another index to the Internet. That’s why John Patrick struck a chord with his comments on blogging.
Blogging is revolutionizing how information gets published and shared. A good blogger loves to communicate and uses blogging tools to write a “column” full of links to experts and sources of information. The blogger may or may not be the expert in a particular area but if not she knows who the expert is and acts as an intermediary and translator, thereby leveraging the available knowledge and expertise. A good enterprise blogger knows everything going on in a particular domain — the key people, the key projects, the key resources, etc. Blogging is not an index of information or a database — it is a living breathing dynamic “diary” of the blogger’s conscious. A blog can include comments from readers, moderated discussion, or an open discussion forum but for enterprise purposes, the simpler the better. The idea is not to reproduce the “bulletin boards” and “news groups” of the past. Blogging is more of a way to get to the experts than to have a free-for-all discussion group.
I’ve been struggling with the question of a blogroll since migrating to movabletype and losing the blogroll I had. John’s post could be talking about blogrolling (a list of links to other weblogs) but I don’t believe so. The “column” he refers to is the column of postings, and not the column of links, as shown by “..and acts as an intermediary and translator, thereby leveraging the available knowledge and expertise.”
Jim McGee’s <a href=“http://www.mcgeesmusings.net/2003/06/16.html#a3376”\>*translation*</a> is how I found John Patrick’s post in the first place. Neither Jim nor John have a blogroll and even if they had, I:
- wouldn’t have followed it because I had no idea why it was important; and
- not seen the link because I get Jim’s news as an RSS feed.
Blogrolling may increase traffic to thought?horizon but most of the citations I see are as the result of a post. In the beginning as a member of the Gurteen K-Community the links to thought?horizon were important but now I can’t tell. I’d like to hear from readers via the comments how you found this site.