Tim's Blog

I'm back from my annual pilgrimage to the Greenbelt Festival (official website) and I've got six hours left till the end of August and the 'deadline' for the 31 days to a better blog challenge.

So, it seems like a good time reflect on the month of blogging, what I've learned, and to see if I can tick off any of the remaining tasks on Daren's task list.

The learning journey so far

Late night updates to Tim's blog inspired by the 31-days-to-a-better-blog challenge seem to be throwing up more problems than they're solving as a tinker with the blog website. However, after a brief spam-related outage, comments are working again and I've been catching up on a few of the 31-day challenges. Details below...

Taking part in the 31-days-to-a-better-blog challenge has got me reflecting on why I'm blogging and how I should approach writing a blog post. So, as an aid to that exploration, I've tried to set out 6 principles for this blog - which are listed below.

What do you think of these principles? Do you have any written, or unwritten, rules or principles that you use to guide your blogging?

Todays challenge in 31-days-to-a-better-blog is to declutter my blogs side-bar.

Decluttering

I've been concious that whilst I'm seeking to bring weave together thinking on technology, youth participation and social change - the audiences interested in those elements are often quite distinct. I had thought about a 'posts on participation' and 'posts on technology' block for the side-bar, but felt that would be too cluttered... however, thanks to the tabbed blocks module for drupal, I've been able to put together a nifty widget which allows visitors to see the recent posts they are most interested in. So, if you're a participation worker or a youth worker and you want to skip over all this stuff about blogging and find the content relevant to you - just click 'On Participation' in the 'Recent Blog Posts' list in the right-hand side-bar area.

The 31-days-to-a-better-blog challenge is carrying on at a high pace.

Today's challenge from ProBlogger Darren Rowse is all about advertising, and as this blog is about sharing rather than making money, that does give me a bit of time to catch up. However, the challenge has got more serious! Sue and Frances are offering chocolate to both the best improved blog over 31 days, and to the best comment posted by a reader of one of the blogs participating in the challenge.

I've joined the challenge, so that, dear reader, means that if you post a great, insightful and fantastic comment on this blog, I might just nominate you to be in the running to win... (Hmm, is this blog bribery?)

I joined the 31-days-to-a-better-blog challenge rather late, but it's already proving amazingly beneficial, not only to this blog - but to my work.

(The 31 Day challenge is a journey in shared learning, drawing upon tasks set by Pro-Logger Darren Rowse - with bloggers brought together by Michele Martin)

I became a freelancer back in April, and since then, I've found myself spending a lot of time working alone on writing and technology projects - not quite managing to make the most of the social aspects of social media. However, after taking the time to e-mail a new reader of the blog, and getting really useful feedback and conversation starters... I realised I need to be more active in involving others in my influencing my work.

Ah - I might just catch up on the 31-days-to-a-better-blog challenge yet.

Late yesterday evening I dropped a note to Mike from Yomo who had managed to get around my very-nearly-not-working comment system (now fixed) to add some reflections to this post (funny how so far only the shortest post I've written has illicited any feedback...). Mike has recently started making good use of blogging and Twitter over here on the Late Breakfast Society blog - bringing together members of his team from across the country.

I feel I should subtitle this post 'Picking mange-tout by moonlight' as I was about to go out and do the watering at 7 O'Clock this evening when I decided to sit down and look at Michele Martin's challenge to her reader to join in a 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge. Four hours and a lot of learning about this blog later, I finally made it out onto the balcony, where I also learned that harvesting the day's crop of salad and beans by night is none-too-easy.