What is storytelling? A Let's Blog Off post

Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "What is storytelling?"

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I spend a lot of time in internet marketing and social media circles. There are a number of buzzwords that get a lot of play in that world and the current most-used and least-understood buzzword is storytelling.

In social media and internet marketing circles, storytelling takes on a shape something like this.

via

Ugh. How do people get paid to come up with such meaningless nonsense? Seriously, what does any of that mean?

My understanding of storytelling comes from something other than a dull-as-dishwater seminar or committee meeting. For me the be-all and end-all example of great storytelling is this, Grimm's Fairy tales.

In 1812, brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published their first edition of 86 German folk tales under the title Kinder- und Hausmärchen. That's translates literally into Children's and Household Tales. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm kept releasing new volumes of stories through 1857 when the story count consisted of 211 tales.

Then, as now, the Brothers Grimm and their stories were savaged by critics for being so inappropriate for children. I disagree of course and am happy to report that I grew up with them.

For me, the stories contained in my unabridged Grimm's Fairy Tale collection epitomize storytelling. Each tale is, like all good stories, a personalized morality tale. And I mean morality in the true, non-religious, sense of the term. Morality is the code of acceptable behavior in a culture. Good stories personalize an account of an individual's either going along with those rules or defying them. But more important than the morality tale aspect to a good story is the personalization.

It's easy to get caught up in the buzzwords and catch phrases of the day and to lose sight of what it is we're talking about when it comes to a term like storytelling. Storytelling has nothing to do with terms like "project-based learning" or "technology integration" (again, what on earth does any of that mean?). Storytelling is the uniquely human ability to personalize a situation to teach a lesson, to make a point, sell a product or just entertain somebody else.

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As the day goes on, the rest of the participants in today's Blog Off will appear miraculously at the end of this post. Keep checking back and check out everybody's postss. You can follow along in Twitter as well, just look for the hashtag #LetsBlogOff. If you'd like more information about about the Blog Off or if you'd like to see the results of previous Blog Offs, you can find the main website here.

What is creativity? A Blog Off Post

What is creativity?

This is a 13,000-year-old spear point and it's an example of creativity.

John Weinstein, © The Field Museum

This is a 5,000-year-old, Elamite bronze figurine and it's an example of creativity.

This is a 3,500-year-old Babylonian Cuneiform tablet and it too is creative.

More than 2500 years ago, the Greek mathematician Pythagoras proposed a theorem.

You guessed, it's creative.

This is an example of Roman opus reticulatum and it's around 2,000 years old.

Opus reticulatum was an earthquake-resistant stone construction technique that was creative.

This is 1,200-year-old Chinese paper money, the world's first. It's creative.

This is an 800-year-old Gothic arch from the Cathedral in St. Denis.

It's creative.

This is a 500-year-old Gutenberg bible.

It's creative.

Antonio Stradavari hit his violin-making prime some 300 years ago.

He was a creativity machine.

152 years ago, Charles Darwin published the Origin of Species.

It was and is creative.

106 years ago, Albert Einstein proposed his Theory of Special Relativity and it ushered in the era of modern science.

It was creative.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 7034 and established the Works Progress Administration in 1935.

It was creative.

Neil Armstrong took his One Small Step 42 years ago.

It was creative.

A little more than 20 years ago, the Berlin Wall fell and Germany reunited.

The Cold War was over and bringing about its demise was creative.

Ten years ago, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launched Wikipedia from St. Petersburg, FL.

It was creative.

Six months ago, four people solidified something called a Blog Off.





It was creative.

Creativity is problem solving, something human beings are uniquely wired to do. Whether it's forging a bronze plow, walking on the moon, composing a symphony or composing a grocery list. Any time somebody uses his or her critical thinking skills, that person is being creative.

My obituary in 208 words, a Blog Off Post

Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The Blog Off this round came about by popular vote and it's based on a human resources exercise where people write their own obituaries as an exercise in answering the question "Who are you?"

A traditional newspaper obituary is 208 words or less so we're honoring that old convention to keep things brief.

It may come across as macabre but I don't think it is in the least. Life's short and denying that needling truth does nobody any favors. So without any further ado, here's my obituary. I'm leaving off the dates to heighten the mystery. Yeah right.

Paul Anater died. He hated flowery terms meant to disguise the finality of death so we'll say that he died. Expressions like "passed on" and "passed over" got on his nerves but the inane "passed" sent him into fits of apoplexy. "Passed what?" he would bark. "Passed the bar? Passed the idiot in the right lane? Call things what they are." Oh that Paul.

He had little patience for public self-analysis and was smart enough to know that the term for it was omphaloskepsis.  He was also smart enough to know that it came from the Greek for "navel gazing." He found other peoples' omphaloskepsis to be self-indulgent and listening to it to be tedious. He spent inordinate amounts of time engaging in it himself of course, but he kept such things private.

Underneath his crotchety exterior he was someone who understood the difference between a thought and a feeling and the wondrous nature of each. He could be imperious and demanding but never thought twice about stopping to answer a question or praise an effort. He loved deeply and was loved just as deeply. No matter what else he did or didn't do, he knew they were the only things that really mattered.

So there you have it a Blog Off obituary in 206 words to be precise. That was a fun exercise. Really. What would you want to appear as your obituary? If something like that ran in The Times I'd be thrilled despite being too dead to appreciate it fully. More than anything it said, I'd be thrilled just to show up in The Times. Hah!

As the day goes on, the rest of the participants in today's Blog Off will appear miraculously at the end of this post. Keep checking back and check out everybody's obits. You can follow along in Twitter as well, just look for the hashtag #LetsBlogOff. If you'd like more information about about the Blog Off or if you'd like to see the results of previous Blog Offs, you can find the main website here.

If money were no object: a Blog Off Post

The following is a Blog Off post. A Blog off is a biweekly event that's sweeping the internet. It's an event where bloggers of all stripes write about the same topic. You can learn more on the Let's Blog Off site. As the day progresses, a table will appear at the end of this post and it will list all of the participants as well as link to their posts.

The gist of the Blog Off this week is a suggestion to muse and meander about what I'd buy my loved ones if money were no object. Well, my loved ones don't really need anything that can be bought with money so I'm abandoning them for this exercise. Well, they'd be welcome to join me in the thing I'm about to muse and meander about but it doesn't involve the exchange of goods between us.

I've written quite a bit about an island in The Bahamas that's very near and dear to me, Cat Island. It has it has own keyword in my glossary it's so near and dear to me.

I never made it over to my Cat Island in 2010 but I will change that in 2011. I will.

I go to Cat Island for its isolation. I can relax there in its primitive loveliness like I can no where else. The combination of being cut off from the rest of the world and the hospitality of the Bahamian people touch me in a really profound way. The accommodations where I stay are pretty primitive but that just adds to the allure.

They're alluring because I'm a white American on vacation. The living conditions for the Bahamians who live on Cat probably don't hold the same romantic allure they do for me. The Bahamians I've come to know are a cheerful, generous lot. I doubt they realize it, but I've learned more from them than I have words to elaborate. Most of those lessons have to do with forcing me to see that most of what I tell myself is a need is an illusion.

The poverty on Cat Island may not feel like poverty to Cat Islanders but it looks like poverty to me. No one goes hungry, but life on the Out Islands of The Bahamas is hard.

I read an article in the Cape Coral, FL Daily Breeze last year that talked about the conditions at the Old Bight High School on Cat Island. I've driven past that high school more times than I can count but the article talked about how the Cape Coral Charter School System donated 2,000 text books to the high school in Old Bight. Prior to their donation, the kids at Old Bight High had one text book for every five to 15 students, depending on the subject. I read another article last October in The Bahamas Weekly that was written by the Honourable Philip "Brave" Davis, the Member of Parliament for Cat and its neighboring islands. Old Bight High School had to close in the fall of 2010 due to a lack of teachers and the unsafe conditions at the school. As of last year, Old Bight High School had 13 teachers to its 134 students. Those 134 students had to be absorbed by the already over extended Arthur's Town High School, 25 miles to the north.

25 miles is an insurmountable distance when your primary mode of transportation is your feet. I can't help but think that due to a lack of resources, any chance of a better life got snubbed out for those 134 kids with that school closure.

My proudest possession is my intellect and it hurts me deeply to hear about the educational conditions on Cat Island. That a generation of kids just had their intellectual opportunities pulled out from underneath them rubs me raw.

photo from The Bahamas Weekly

These kids deserve to be able to do anything they want with their lives and they can't do that without books and schools.

So if money were no object I would start a foundation, an educational foundation. A mistake a lot of western aid organizations make is that they're western aid organizations. Mine wouldn't be in the business of making sovereign people jump through hoops to get money. Instead, my foundation would be staffed and run by Bahamians, Cat Islanders wherever possible. My foundation would staff schools with Bahamian teachers and provide Bahamas-appropriate text books. My fantasy foundation would help to raise a generation of smart and proud Bahamians. They'd be a group of people who knew who they were and where they stood as integral parts of the sweeping history of the islands they call home.

But alas, my foundation is all in my head and likely to stay there. Unfortunately, money is an object all too real and the kids at New Bight High School got that for their big lesson this year.

It's unfathomable to me that schools close due to a lack of teachers and resources in a country just offshore from the US. A country where millions of North Americans and Europeans go every year to unwind.

So maybe what there is to do here is stop dreaming about money not being an obstacle to having basic needs met. Maybe what there is to do is find a way to actually lend a hand. Schools across the developed world throw away books by the truck load every year. It's true that Cat Island's schools represent a small, small portion of the total need, but they're the portion I know.

What would it take to partner up with a couple of school districts in Florida or elsewhere in the US? Anybody know somebody who can make a connection like that happen? Anybody out there want to lend a hand?

I've been given an island, a Blog Off post

The following is a Blog Off post. A Blog off is an event where bloggers of all stripes write about the same topic. You can learn more on the Let's Blog Off site. As the day progresses, a table will appear at the end of this post and it will list all of the participants as well as link to their posts. This week's Blog Off topic isn't just a topic, it's a situation.

No, not that Situation. I mean it's a hypothetical situation:

You’re given an island. The only thing to consider is once you move there, you can’t leave. Who and what would you bring? What are the rules?

There's nothing in here that says I won't have contact with anybody once I'm there, so I'm not bringing anybody with me. Now that that's decided, I'm going to pack up a U-Haul and go to my island. So the answer to what will I bring is everything but my car.

Since this is my island situation, I get to pick the island and here's the island I'm picking.

It's not just any Manhattan though, it's my Manhattan. It still operates under the usual rules except for a couple of important changes. First, on my Manhattan I have an income in the mid-six-figures for being a bon vivant. I'm going to be one of those Manhattanites who lives really well but has no visible means of support.

I will have a townhouse on Perry Street in the West Village and I get the whole house, not just a floor.

The following businesses will remain in business in perpetuity so that I can hunt and gather to my heart's content.

Murray's Cheese on Bleeker Street.

Until you've been to Murray's, you can't really understand cheese.

McNulty's Tea and Coffee on Christopher Street.

Somebody's got to keep me stocked with Russian tea.

The Westside Market on 7th Avenue at 15th Street.

For everything else.

And for times when I want an injection of hip without spending too much money, I want a table standing by at the Coffee Shop in Union Square.

I know, I know, but I like how the hip factor rubs off of all those NYU kids and onto me when I'm in there.

I will need to get around, so I will have a magic MTA card.

My MTA card will always have a $25 balance no matter what I do or how many times I jump on a bus or train.

While I'm casting spells, I'll need to do something with the weather. I love New York but the weather's dreadful for almost half of the year so I'm posing the following weather schedule. On Mondays and Fridays it will be spring and tulips will bloom up and down Park Avenue on both days.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays it will be autumn, but a warm and sunny kind of autumn.

On Wednesdays it will snow but it will be gone by the time autumn arrives on Thursdays.

Every weekend it will be July, 1983 when Miss Diana Ross captivated the world with a free concert in Central Park.







And every night, Sak's Fifth Avenue will light up its facade with The Story of the Bubble and the Snowflake.




So the rule is, I make the rules.

Oh and there's one more thing. In my Manhattan, I'll be able to wander into Grand Central Terminal any time I want to and stand in the middle of the concourse. Then I'll look up at the ceiling and just spin slowly with my arms extended. I do that now but in my personal Manhattan no one will mock me when I do it.

A Blog Off post: Thanksgiving's coming, what's it to you?

The following is a Blog Off post. A Blog off is a biweekly event where bloggers of all stripes write about the same topic. You can learn more on the Let's Blog Off site. As the day progresses, a table will appear at the end of this post and it will list all of the participants as well as link to their posts.

Oh man, it's Thanksgiving next week. How on earth did that happen already. This year has shot by with a speed that's making my head spin but now that Thanksgiving's around the corner, I suppose that means things'll be winding down on 2010.

What a year it's been. Everybody was telling me at this time last year that 2010 was going to be my break out year and in more ways than I can count it has been. When I look back on the last 11 months and think about the people I've met and the places I've been and when I add that the last two years' worth of people and experiences and wow. My life's unrecognizable from how it looked three years ago. That's fantastic of course and I am deeply, deeply grateful for how things look today.

But I was deeply, deeply grateful three years ago when everything I'm up to these days wasn't even on my radar.

Around 15 years ago, someone very wise told me that I should "choose what's so." It made no sense to me at the time, I was somebody to whom life happened.

Back then I was unhappy and ungrateful. I was waiting for the next big thing that never seemed to arrive and I couldn't figure out why I was so miserable. I thought that the key to happiness was to do the stuff that would help me get the things that would bring me the happiness I was looking for. A lot of people lead their lives that way, I can see that now.

It took me years to see that the do+have=be happy equation was a recipe for continued misery but eventually I did see it. Once I started to really think about that wise man's suggestion that I choose what's so I figured out that I had it all backwards. The answer wasn't do+have=be happy and that the answer I was looking for wasn't even an equation. The key was to be happy first. Once I was a happy, grateful man I'd do the things that happy, grateful people do. Once I was doing the sorts of things that happy, well-adjusted people do I'd find myself surrounded with the trappings of a fulfilled life.

It worked and it works. When I start out happy everything falls into place from there and it's absolutely unrelated to the circumstances I find myself in. If my default mode is grateful then everything's a gift. Since life is a series of stories I tell myself why not tell an empowering story?

Thanksgiving always gets me present to this stuff and I think it's absolutely fantastic that in the US we have a specific day set aside to be grateful. Five other countries around the world also have a day set aside called Thanksgiving but a day to be grateful goes a lot deeper than that. Human cultures have had harvest festivals for as long as there have been human cultures and something tells me that I'm not the first person to trip over the idea that being grateful is a good thing.

Maybe someday I'll find an excuse to prattle on some more about how to be grateful to nothing in particular.

So happy Thanksgiving folks. The assignment was to write about what it is to me and everything I just wrote is it. What's Thanksgiving to you?

A Blog Off post: what makes me laugh

The following post is part of a biweekly blogospheric happening called a Blog Off. In a Blog Off, bloggers from all walks of life write about the same subject. The topic for this Blog Off is: What makes you laugh? Blog Off topics are left vague intentionally so that participants can run freely with their musings. If you'd like more information on the Blog Off, check out the website. At the end of this post will appear a table with links to all of the participating blogs and that table's repeated on the main Blog Off site. So excuse me while I take a break from my niche (again) and throw it all out there.

I have a good sense of humor. I think so anyhow but when this topic came up I had to really think about what it is that makes me laugh. For starters, and as the cartoon above suggests, The New Yorker makes me laugh. I've been reading that magazine for more than half my life and it's never failed to make me think and it's never failed to make me laugh.

New Yorker cartoons and indeed the whole magazine require that its readers have a pretty specific frame of reference. Getting the humor makes me feel smart and I like that. So smart is an important quality in the things that make me laugh.

I think it's that combination of thinking and laughing that has all the ingredients I need to be amused. Slapstick humor's usually lost on me and please please please don't make me sit through anything involving Ben Stiller or Jim Carey.

One of my new-ish internet finds that never fails to leave me in stitches is My First Dictionary.

My First Dictionary takes its lead from the children's readers I grew up with but the similarities stop there. The vocabulary words have a definite adult slant and the examples usually involve some kind of horrrific situation told in a sing-songy way.

I love the absurdity, irreverence and menace of My First Dictionary. So add those three qualities to smart in what makes me laugh.

I first saw the movie Citizen Ruth in 1996 when it was in limited theatrical release. It was an absolute fluke that I ended up seeing it in the first place and Citizen Ruth has become one of my favorite comedies of all time.







The genius behind Citizen Ruth went on to make three more films and Alexander Payne's film work forms the back bone of my movie collection.

After Citizen Ruth, Payne made Election in 1999.

Election starred Matthew Broderick and a then-unknown Reese Witherspoon in a little film about a high school student council election that no one under the age of 30 can possibly understand.







His next film, About Schmidt, came out in 2002 and starred Jack Nicholson and Cathy Bates. About Schmidt is about growing old and relies on the absurdity of aging for its humor.







His latest, Sideways, came out in 2004. Alexander Payne won the Oscar for best writing, adapted screenplay for the movie.







It took the idea of the buddy picture, the road picture and two ammoral anti-heroes and came up with something all together new. It's as if id and ego go away together for a weekend and it's brilliantly hilarious.

So smart makes me laugh. Along with absurdity, irreverence, vague menace and real life. Plenty of other things make me laugh too. I love to sit around a table after dinner and laugh with friends. Kevin, Brandon, JD, Bob, Rick and a handful of others never fail to keep me in stitches.

My nieces and nephews make me laugh and the fact that there are 22 of of them is funny in and of itself.

All in all, humor for me is something I have to be in front of to recognize a lot of times. It's difficult for me to list the things I find humorous. Much harder than I thought it would be when I found out about this topic a week ago. Try it some time. To that end, what makes you laugh?

There's a table that will appear magicially with all of the participants in this week's Blog Off. Check back through out the the day to see who's weighing in on this weighty topic.

A Blog Off post: I am an optimist at heart

The following post is part of a biweekly blogospheric happening called a Blog Off. In a Blog Off, bloggers from all walks of life write about the same subject. The topic for this Blog Off is: Is There Reason to be Optimistic? Blog Off topics are left vague intentionally so that participants can run freely with their musings. If you's like more information on the Blog Off, check out the website. At the end of this post will appear a table with links to all of the participating blogs and that table's repeated on the main Blog Off site. So excuse me while I take a break from my niche (again) and throw it all out there.

I am an optimist. As skeptical and suspicious as I am, at the end of the day I'm thrown to see the positive way forward in any situation. That's not always been the case, I've trained myself to be an optimist. It took a number of years to get to the point where seeing the brighter side is my default mode but I got there. If I can do it, anybody can. Really. I don't see optimism in the same way a lot of people do though.

To be an optimist is to be a realist. All too often, optimism gets confused with sentiment or nostalgia or naiveté but the key to seeing the positives is to be able to assess and gauge reality as it is, not as I'd like it to be.

We live in troubled times. Though 2010's hardly a uniquely troubled time. Humanity's been watching great civilizations rise and fall for a very long time and in the big picture, that story arc never changes. Our times are no different than times have ever been. Here are some of humanity's greatest hits; Elam, Egypt, Assyria, Minoa, Persia, Greece, Phoenicia, Rome, Byzantium, The Ottoman Empire, the Portuguese Empire, The Spanish Empire and The British Empire. That's just a list of sequential empires off the top of my head. All of them have come and gone and each one followed a similar story arc. That's a simplification of course, but each of those civilizations believed itself to be special, ordained by god (s) even. Each one had a rise, a plateau, a decline and then a collapse.

I believe I live in a declining empire and I don't think that makes me a pessimist to hold that opinion. Believing that the decline of the US and by extension the rest of the West can be arrested and reversed isn't optimism, it's a delusion. It's a delusion to believe that everybody can have a bachelor's degree and a 2400 square foot house on a cul de sac. It's a delusion to believe that we can fix everything if we all speak English, or if none of us are Muslim, or if we keep hounding gays until they all jump off bridges. No one can delay the inevitable by manufacturing new enemies.

Admitting to and owning reality isn't pessimism, it pragmatism. It's only in assessing things as they are, not as they ought to be, that people can then choose to be optimistic. I don't think the current decline can be reversed, but I do think it can be slowed. The US doesn't have to collapse in an orgy of civil unrest and it doesn't have to be conquered on a field of war. Those things aren't automatic but to avoid them it's going to require a rational assessment of things as they are and the positive, optimistic, collective choice to keep the upper hand and maintain the rule of law.

So after all that, the question is Is there reason to be optimistic? I say you bet there is. There are all kinds of reasons to be optimistic. I'm alive and I'm in charge and everything flows from there. I can't fix the problems of the US but what I can do is vote for candidates who show something close to a grasp on reality. I can't fix the housing market, the banking crisis or the dreary jobs picture. What I can do though is shield myself from that stuff as best I can and keep plugging away to keep a roof over my head in a mess of an economy. You can't stay flexible, you can't change with the times, you can't assess a situation accurately until you can see it and then chose to be optimistic. The world as I've come to know may be going down the tubes but I don't have to go with it. You know, life isn't easy but it sure is fun. And if all else fails, I have tickets to go see La Bohème at the Met on December 11th.

Are blogs as important as bloggers think they are?

This post is part of of the biweekly Blogoff, a now legendary event where bloggers of all stripes weight in on the same topic. This week's theme is the title of this post: Are bloggers as important as bloggers think they are?

I like to think of myself as an influential blogger and by some measures I am. To remind myself that the qualifier some measures definitely applies to me, I keep this New Yorker cartoon by Alex Gregory on hand. It helps to keep me from putting too much stock in my own PR.

When Mr. Gregory drew that cartoon and The New Yorker ran it in September 2005, there were 70 million blogs in the world* and I really didn't know what a blog was. The blog indexer Technorati issues an annual report on the state of the Blogosphere and by 2009, the latest figures they have, there were 133,000,000 million blogs indexed**.

All statistics relating to blogs and blogging are hard to pin down because they deal with such an anarchic subject. Blog activity and blog traffic numbers are generally reported by bloggers themselves and even if you take that into account, there are a whole lot of blogs out there. Technorati paints a really interesting profile of what bloggers looked like as of 2009.

• 77% of Internet users read blogs according to Universal McCann
• Two-thirds of Bloggers are male  (c’mon ladies, start Blogging!)
• More than half are married and more than half are parents
• 60% are 18-44
• 75% have college degrees and 40% have graduate degrees
• One in four has an annual household income of $100K+
• Around half of Bloggers are working on at least their second blog
• 68% have been blogging for two years or more
• 86% have been blogging for at least a year

But of course I find statistics like this interesting, I'm part of the cohort in question. What's interesting too is a glimpse into why people blog.

• 72% of respondents are classified as Hobbyists, meaning that they report no income related to blogging
• Of those who have monetized their blogging to at least some extent:
• 54% are Part-Timers
• 32% are Self-Employed Bloggers
• 14% are Corporate Bloggers (defined as someone who draws a salary as a blogger for a company)

While I don't support myself from this blog's ad revenue, I derive all of my income from it and the projects having a blog leads to. That puts me in the 32% category, self-employed bloggers. There are more of us than I thought and that's a good thing.

Out of all of those statistics though, the most interesting and most important one is the first stat I listed, 77% of Internet users read blogs. When you stop to consider that web sites like The Huffington Post and Apartment Therapy are blogs with monthly traffic numbers in the millions, that 77% figure isn't very surprising.

Blogs, like newspapers, magazines or any other media form come in all shapes sizes and levels of influence. The question "Are blogs important?" gets asked all the time and it's as difficult a question to answer as "Are newspapers important?" The answer depends on which blogs, and which newspapers you're talking about. There's a pretty clear difference between The New York Times and The Dayton Daily News. According to those Technorati statistics, only 15% of Bloggers spend 10 or more hours each week blogging. That means there are a whole lot of hobbyist bloggers out there. Not that there's a thing wrong with being a hobbyist blogger but you can't lump a blog that documents the comings and going of a young family to an audience made up of that young family's grandparents with The Huffington Post.

Everybody who writes a blog thinks his or her blog is important and influential. Including me. But numbers don't lie and they don't grow in relation to wishes and dreams. So are blogs important? Yes some are.

If the question is turned to "Is blogging important?" the answer's a resounding yes and that importance only grows every day. As a social phenomenon its importance can't be overstated. With that said, there's a world of difference between blogging as a whole and an individual blog.

Old media isn't going anywhere and it's only a matter of time until "new" media gets absorbed by it. But blogging itself is changing the landscape. It's a lot of fun to be something of a pioneer (at least within my niche) and to have found myself a player in my industry (even if it's a bit part). But what's most amazing to me is that I can derive an income from it.

If you ask me how influential Kitchen and Residential Design is I wouldn't know how to answer that question. If you ask me how influential blogging is in the kitchen and bath industry, I'd say that it's a growing influence. But that's my niche and my industry. All niches and all industries will answer that question differently.

So if the question is Are blogs as important as bloggers think they are? My answer would be Ask a better question.

All of the participating bloggers in today's Blog Off will be listed here and updated as the day goes on. Give 'em all a look-see.

Edit

Blogger	Twitter	Blog Post Link
Veronika Miller	@modenus	Modenus Community
Paul Anater	@paul_anater	Kitchen and Residential Design
Rufus Dogg	@dogwalkblog	DogWalkBlog
Becky Shankle	@ecomod	Eco-Modernism
Bob Borson	@bobborson	Life of an Architect
Nick Lovelady	@cupboards	Cupboards Kitchen and Bath
Sean Lintow, Sr.	@SLSconstruction	SLS-Construction.com
Hollie Holcombe	@GreenRascal	Green Rascal Design
Saxon Henry	@saxonhenry	Roaming by Design
Betsy De Maio	@egrgirl	Egrgirl's Blog
Ami	@beackami	Multifarious Miscellany

It's another Blog Off: do social sites like Facebook connect or isolate?

So today's another Blog Off, an event where bloggers of all stripes weigh in on the same topic. This week's topic is "Do social sites like Facebook connect the world or isolate people?" The topic was spawned by a flawed scrap of research that the mainstream media pounced on like vultures on road kill. Never mind that the research in question amounted to a poll conducted by an undergraduate of her peers in a  psych class. What mattered was the finding that Facebook is a magnet for narcissists and self-haters equally. Because no one seems to understand statistics or how to construct a logical argument, headlines exploded in August. Within days, the conventional wisdom had jumped to yet another flawed assumption. Namely that Facebook causes narcissism.

From the Telegraph

Facebook provides an ideal setting for narcissists to monitor their appearance and how many ‘friends’ they have, the study said, as it allows them to thrive on ‘shallow’ relationships while avoiding genuine warmth and empathy.

From the Toronto Star

Compelled to tell your 500 Facebook chums every time you can’t find your sunglasses? Want the world to know you look like Robert Pattison? Post new Photoshopped pictures every day?

You, my friend, are narcissistic and insecure.

I could go on and list quotes and back links for days but you see my point. The mainstream media seems to be threatened by social media, the new kid on the block, and the results are predictable.

I have my share of problems with Facebook. I think of it as a cul de sac on the World Wide Web. It's the new AOL I tell people all the time. Facebook is a duplicated, smaller version of the web and despite the fact that it connects people from their respective pasts and presents, the only thing it isolates is people from their futures. I'll get to that in a minute but I love having a site where I can catch up with my nieces and nephews, my siblings, old friends from high school and college and the rest. But my past is my past for a reason. It's pleasant to hang out there from time to time but it doesn't help me get to where I want to go. I think that's Facebook's Achilles' heel by the way and it will be what does it in. It's all but impossible to meet new people there.

I don't know about anybody else, but my life has been completely and utterly transformed by social media. I document most of it on Facebook, but none of this transformation starts there. For me it started with Blogger.

Two-and-a-half years ago I was an unknown designer in a second-tier city tucked along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. Thanks to the kick start I got from my Blogger blog, here I sit as some kind of an industry thought leader (I hate that term) with a network of peers, colleagues and friends that spans the globe. My involvement with Blogger, and later Twitter has brought me face to face with a good number of these colleagues and friends. From the first half of 2010 alone here are a few of my personal/ professional connections.

Kelly Morrisseau writes the blog KitchenSync. She is the first designer/ blogger who ever reached out to me as a new blogger and we've maintained a a strong friendship ever since. Here we are in New York last February.

This is the community of design bloggers as it looked last winter. That photo was taken at a cocktail party in New York hosted by Brizo faucets and Manning, Selvage and Lee Public Relations last February.

Here's Saxon Henry, me, Sabrina Velandry, Paul Velandry, Johnny Grey, Chuck Wheelock and Andie Day. We met on Twitter and we're sitting in the first and second rows of a Fashion Week fashion show. We've been brought together by Brizo because we're design bloggers.

This is me speaking at the Kitchen and Bath Industry Show (KBIS) in Chicago last April. I got to that spot because a year-and-a-half ago Google itself found me via my blog and pulled me out of the scrum. They recommended me to Masco and fast forward a few months and there I am speaking at Kraftmaid's KBIS booth.

This is Zoe Voight and I hanging out in the press room at a trade show. I'm in the press room as a credentialed journalist because somebody at Veeder + Perman Public Relations loves me and loves my blog.

Here's a bunch of design bloggers at a seminar sponsored by @brizo.

Here I am giving another talk at another trade show, the Southeast Builder's Conference this time. Masco is paying me to deliver a talk on how much my blog has changed my life. Pinch me.

Everything that's going on in those photos, all of those personal connections, were made possible through my social media presence. When I hear claims that I'm further isolated I laugh at the absurdity of it.

As my travel schedule starts to take form for 2011 I just shake my head. On the inside I still think of myself as that unknown designer in a second-tier city. Based on the events where I'll be speaking, it's pretty clear that that's no longer the case.

Social media sites make the world a smaller place. They present an opportunity for real, personal connections that transcend geography to a degree and with an immediacy that's never been possible in the whole of human history. Social media generally and Twitter in particular, is where I find my future.

As is the case with anything, thew only thing social site offer is a set of tools. By the time sites like Facebook grow to the size they are (they claim 500 million members worldwide) people are bound to abuse those tools and some people can find themselves more isolated. But just as is the case with anything, it's not automatic. Facebook doesn't cause anything but compromised privacy. People who are thrown to narcissism or isolation are going to be those things with or without social media sites. All of that is a distraction from what's possible though. Better than anything I know, social media takes what's possible and makes it what's probable. As I look forward to the career shifts, adventures and challenges headed my way in the next few months I can't help but say that I owe all of it to Blogger, Twitter, YouTube, Posterous and yes, even Facebook. Me isolated? Don't make me laugh.

As part of a Blog Off, you can go to the official site and see the links to all of participating bloggers' posts. As the day goes on, I'll start listing them here as well.