Broadcasting Brain

This is Blog Day 2008 and, in celebration of this, I’m featuring five bloggers from other countries (I’m excluding Canada and the US.)

I Started Something - by Long Zheng - this blogger was born in China, then moved to Australia in 1997, where he still resides. He blogs about PC technology, with a focus on Microsoft in particular. When you read his About page and some of his posts you’ll detect a somewhat sarcastic writing style which is pretty amusing. Nicely designed blog.

Delve Into The Mind of a Budding Blogger - by MeghnaK - I’ve come across this young lady from India via StumbleUpon in the past. She says she’s 14 years old and is a very enthusiastic and dedicated writer. I think this young blogger will become a force to reckon with as she continues her work.

Foreign Dispatches - by Abiola Lapite - this blogger is apparently based somewhere in Africa, although he says he spent many years living in the UK. He writes about a variety of topics and is a very good photographer.

D for Disorientation - by Pablo - this blogger writes about current events and politics in Argentina, including the English translation of an article called The Musketeers of Redistribution (Los mosqueteros de la redistribución). Definitely focuses on politics and current events.

The Environmental Blog from the Grumpy Old Man - by Eddie deClercq - well, the title pretty much sums it up. Some interesting thoughts on the environmental movement and discussion of electric cars.

Why not have a look at these blogs? And, for that matter, you can also do tag searches in directories like BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog, and Technorati. Search by country to see information about bloggers from other countries.

Again, Happy Blog Day!

BlogDay2008

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EDIT: if you’ve arrived here from Mashable.com or some other source, this post might help you get oriented.  Thanks for stopping by and please take a look around!

Just a quick note to let you know that I’ve made big changes to my former Popular Posts page here at Broadcasting Brain.

It’s now called Essential Broadcasting and it’s got some of my best material arranged in themes and categories. It’s actually kind of rewarding to see the material grouped together like this; you can see how some of my posts form natural groups.

So far I’ve got sections devoted to:

• social media
• blogging in particular
• writing

Plus I need to create a section for Web 2.0 technologies like Twitter and FriendFeed.

Check it out and tell 5 friends, would you please? And why not ask them (and you, for that matter) to subscribe while they are there: there’s always more goodness in the pipeline.

If you aren’t passionate about something, does that mean that you are dead, brain dead, or otherwise insignificant?

Of course not, because you’re likely passionate about something else. You won’t be passionate about everything in your life because some things are painful, boring, or just generally suck.

However, the term passionate has been discussed in great detail by a number of different people. One of the more lively discussions about passionates/early adopters occurred at Mashable.com during the past 24 hours, although the comments section tended to revolve around an exchange of opinions between the author (Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins) and one of the commentators (Robert “Scobleizer” Scoble). However you regard the exchanges in the comments section, I do think that Mark brought up a good point that it’s worthwhile to look at the value of applications (or anything, really) to non-passionates (i.e. the folks who just want a tool to get a job done, like the way that I personally view most machinery, tools, etc.)

I think it’s perfectly fine to be an enthusiast, or maven, for that matter, because this kind of person helps usher change into our world. Much of that change is beneficial or will be at some future point.

On the other hand, if someone is extolling the virtues of something that I don’t care that much about… it’s kind of a lost cause, isn’t it? The nice thing about the Web, however, is that it’s pretty easy to ignore stuff that you don’t want to read or hear about. As Marvin the Paranoid Android once said:

Don’t try to engage my enthusiasm — I haven’t got one.

Not about everything.

However, at the same time, many of us don’t like to be told what to do, what to think, or that we are too limited to understand something. We can be pretty sensitive to that kind of talk and I think this is what likely upset Steven Hobson yesterday in his post about Scoble’s opinion on who would be interested in the new Mozilla Ubiquity product that’s being worked on at the Mozilla Labs.

The following quote is a comment that I left at Steven Hobson’s WinExtra blog about his concerns:

Steven, I like and admire your work; same is true for Robert Scoble. His post may have a slightly elitist tone, but to me his words would be similar to any maven who is raving about something that appeals to a small audience, whether it’s:

-wine
-sporting goods
-automobiles
-camera equipment
-designer clothing
-power tools
-gourmet cookware

There’s going to be mass-market versions of these products AND high-end stuff for passionates (or enthusiasts, or whatever else you want to call them). It doesn’t particularly bother me if a lot of that stuff is outside my price range, skill set, and interest level. I don’t need a $3,000 digital camera and if someone told me that it wasn’t for me, especially someone who WAS a maven, I’d probably take that at face value as long as they didn’t imply that I was stupid or inferior for working at a different level. Did Robert mean to imply that? Who knows? And, even if he did, big deal. We all know our own skills, knowledge, and sense of self-worth and it doesn’t matter if someone happens to reach a bigger audience to make their opinion heard. If people are willing to follow someone’s preachings without getting the facts themselves, then buyer beware. Meanwhile, you make your own decisions about what’s right for you.

For what it’s worth, based on what I just read, I think that Robert’s right, at least in the earliest stages: Ubiquity’s functionality isn’t for non-passionates because a lot of people won’t have the necessary frame of reference to use it. This is also true for something as deceptively simple as Twitter. For some reason this talk of Ubiquity makes me wonder if this is how developers and enthusiasts sounded when they first started tinkering with technologies like OLE. Or HTML. Or TCP/IP. Or RSS.

On the flip side: if I understand the plans for Ubiquity and similar products, we’ll ALL be using it in 5 - 10 years, although it will be in the form of tools that are easier to use.

At any rate, I think many of us know better than to read too much into what Robert writes. It’s quite possible that he’ll trash this technology within six months anyway OR he’ll love it even more. He is who he is.

Now, another point of clarification: my Twitter/FriendFeed conversation streams did address the tendency for a number of bloggers (myself included, on occasion) to write about the same topic almost in unison. I get a little frustrated, especially of late, because I don’t feel that there’s anything else that I can add to those conversations. Maybe there isn’t anything more to be said. But, you know, this is how groups of passionates work. They (we) talk about the same topics over and over because we love them and we are pleased when we uncover some nuance that we can share with other people. That’s perfectly fine!

You know, maybe this is all a good thing. Maybe we all need to remember that we’re multi-dimensional beings with many different talents and interests. One might be a non-passionate about technology while being a passionate about hockey, NASCAR, fishing, chess, or…. well, fill in the blanks. And that’s OK, as long as we acknowledge that we have the right to varying levels of interest about the things we love, like, tolerate, or hate.

Anyway, that’s enough for my first-ever WinExtra guest post.

Yes, a little joke at the end.

I’m one of the people who doesn’t take offense to the use of passionate vs. non-passionate, because mentally I exchange the word passionate for enthusiast and it means the same to me. I think I made my point of view clear in the comments above. However, to Steven’s perspective, I don’t like it when people try to engage my enthusiasm when I’m not receptive or when they try to shut it down without understanding me first.

I debated writing this because it’s already old news in the blogosphere, but what the hell.  You’re never too old to climb back into the echo chamber for a few minutes.

This is just a quick note to let you know that I’ve got a guest post called Netvouz - A Quality One Man Bookmarking Show over at Louis Gray’s blog.

Once again, thanks for the opportunity to contribute at your blog, Louis.

Oh, and if you want a change of pace, I wrote a quick article over the weekend talking about famous people from Maine.  You might be surprised at a couple of the names.

To close, as I wrote on Twitter yesterday:

We all wake up under the same sun and see the same moon rise at night - that’s a good start, isn’t it?

Many of us would like to solve the mystery of writer’s block. I’ve been blocked on an eBook project for weeks but I solved this case today. In this post I’m going to share my thoughts on a way to get past writing struggles by using a detective’s tools.

Writing is like solving a mystery

There are two common ways to start a writing project:

1. Gather lots of data and use it build an intelligible document. This document will be influenced by what you learn - it may start with no thesis.

If you have a lot of leeway in your writing assignment you can try the first method. This can be fun if you enjoy doing research. You get to start with nothing and then let the information guide your writing.

2. Start with a hypothesis and then go digging for information to prove it.

A lot of writing assignments start with a pre-determined subject and slant. Feature articles for blogs and magazines are used by editors to fill in their editorial calendars. They know they want certain types of articles at certain times, so that’s what you get to write.

In both methods, you’ve got to do research and synthesize data in order to write. A key difference lies in how quickly you draw conclusions about the subject matter. You as the author must decode the information, find the clues, and solve the case by writing an article that puts the pieces together.

Let’s look at a couple of examples of great detectives and see if we can learn from their methods.

Sherlock Holmes – master of deduction

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s celebrated sleuth has been a popular character for more than 120 years. Sherlock Holmes was virtually unmatched in his ability to solve crimes through investigation and deduction.

Holmes had an unworldly talent to make deductions about perfect strangers through observation. He knew how to find clues that could describe people’s lives and interests through mundane things like body language; scars and discolorations; brands and types of clothing; ashes; and so on. Holmes was a master observer and synthesizer of data.

Chief Inspector Morse – master of hypothesis

Holmes’s methods of solving crimes couldn’t be more different than the more contemporary exploits of Inspector Morse, Colin Dexter’s cult favorite detective. Morse was a brilliant, and eccentric, detective in his own right, but his methods were far different than Sherlock Holmes’s. I would classify Morse as a hypothesizer.

Morse tended to make snap judgements after observing a crime scene. Somehow, by using a combination of years of investigation experience and intuition, Morse would develop a solution. Morse almost inevitably solved his crimes, but not without incident. Unfortunately, Morse’s initial hypotheses rarely worked. He would also become attached to his ideas until overwhelming evidence would disuade him. Thus, it may have taken him much longer to solve a case than if he let the facts speak for themselves. On the other hand, his methods were effective in most cases where other detectives would have failed.

Deduction vs. hypothesizing – which is better?

In my case, let’s pretend that I wanted to prove that right-handed bloggers were more successful than left-handed bloggers. I started to write my eBook based on the assumption that right-handed bloggers were superior bloggers. After all, I knew of several successful right-handed bloggers, and didn’t know of any lefties, so I assumed that righties were better.

As I wrote I found it harder and harder to continue. What seemed like an easy exercise (I’d already written some related posts, so I figured it would be simple to write) became very difficult. Soon I was stalled and the document languished on my hard drive for weeks.

Credit: Emdot

How did I get stuck? Simple: the facts that I found began to disprove my hypothesis. I found some examples of successful left-handed bloggers. I couldn’t find any evidence that suggested that one’s dominant hand had any impact on blogging.

I started to doubt that right-handed bloggers were superior to left-handed bloggers. (remember, this is only hypothetical - handedness doesn’t really make any difference)

My downfall was that I was married to my hypothesis, not unlike Inspector Morse following a pet theory to a dead end. My inability to move from my hypothesis, despite the evidence to the contrary, made it impossible to continue writing.

I could have avoided my problem by following the Holmes example. Instead of trying to write the story that I wanted to write, I should have focused on the story that I found. I should have done more research ahead of time so that I could come up with a better direction for my eBook.

And so, I’ve decided that I need to switch to Holmesian mode for this eBook. Instead of running with a particular theory, I’m going back to a clean sheet of paper. I’m going to conduct research by interviewing a bunch of bloggers and learning from their experiences. I’m going to use that research to draw some logical conclusions. I’m going to go to where the research leads me.

In this case, deduction will work better.

Don’t rule out the power of hypothesizing

Hypothesizing is a powerful tool and it has its place. Editors will ask for certain types of stories because their experience tells them that they’re out there. They won’t always be right, but they often are. Despite the many twists and turns of his cases, Morse almost always solves the crime. He simply uses steps and paths that Holmes might not use.

A hypothesis can be used to perform directed and valuable research. I could read about blogging for days and never come to any conclusions about the performance of left-handed vs. right-handed bloggers if I never check out that angle.

The other thing about the use of hypothesis is to be prepared when your hypothesis is proven to be incorrect. In some cases this is simple. If your hypothesis is completely wrong, you can use your existing research to rewrite or reshape your work in the direction of the correct conclusions. If the real story is some different combination of ideas, you need to be more flexible in your thinking. Sometimes you have to let go and follow the facts wherever they go.

Fill your toolkit with multiple approaches

I’ve tried to show that hypothesizing and deduction can both have their place in writing. I think that some forms of writers block is the result of placing too much emphasis on one method.

If you’re stuck because a flawed theory, you need to let go of the theory and get back to researching your topic to get on the right track. Conversely, if you research, research, and research, but you don’t know what to do with your newly acquired knowledge, then maybe you just need to pick some possible directions and analyze them until you find something that works.

This change of mindset has helped me – I hope it will help you.

(Approx 6 hrs. and two major edits)

EDIT:  This post has been submitted as a part of a Problogger.net group writing project on headlines.

EDIT: Sept. 23/08 - I wrote a post where I increased the size of my readership goals significantly.

Dear Broadcasting Brain readers:

The following post was originally posted at the Triiibes Ning group. I don’t normally repeat content, but I thought that this post might give you some insight into where I want to go as a writer and a content creator.

It may be a pipe dream… but maybe not.

Thanks for reading, as always. I’d really be interested in hearing what you have to say about this, either here at the blog or you can drop me a line at contact AT broadcasting-brain PERIOD com.

# # #

Just to be clear: although I have a stated goal of building up my blog to 250,000 subscribers (my “tribe”, as it were), I have no illusions that this can be accomplished overnight, if at all. That’s more realistically a ten year goal.

But, to be honest, that’s what I’m aiming for, if not higher. I would tend to think that most syndicated columnists have a readership of at least 0.25 million people. A number of successful publications have circulations of 250,000. It seems like a fair goal to aim for in terms of what I’d like to achieve.

But, more importantly, this is something that I want to achieve in my own little town in my own little country, outside of the major media centers of the world. After all, Stephen King lives in Bangor, Maine and that’s only a couple of hours from where I live. Granted, he’s got that talent thing (and a huge work ethic) going for him, but still…

The beauty of the Web is that it’s far more likely that I could achieve this goal from my little town than at any other time in history. Physical location is no longer a limitation, not when our brains communicate widely and freely across the Web and the blogosphere.

I have a very long road ahead of me to meet this goal - I’m only at about 0.17% of my target. Getting the rest is one heck of a BHAG. Why not be honest about where I really want to be, though?

How about you? Do you really think about how far, fast, or high that you really want to go? Do you content yourself with smaller goals out of the fear of failure, disappointment, and embarrassment?

Even if you fail, do you think that maybe, just maybe, you’ll be farther ahead if you keep your real goal, your dream, in mind?

There’s a line between repeating a message to get through noise vs. spamming.

Marketers must master that distinction, I think.

Issue 2 of Thought Radiation, a companion publication of Broadcasting Brain that’s only available by E-Mail, is ready to go.  As before, it’s a very simple format, no graphics, etc. newsletter talking about past, present and future of my content creation work.  And other interesting stuff.

If you had already signed up for my mailing list, then don’t worry, a copy of the newsletter is on the way.

If you’d like to be included on the mailing list, just drop me a line at contact@broadcasting-brain.com and I’ll gladly include you on this list so you can receive the first two issues plus all upcoming newsletters and stuff.

Cheers!

I don’t normally dig into the tech mainstream in this blog, but Mike Arrington’s Techcrunch article on his woes with Apple devices and services does catch my attention for the following reasons:

1. It’s a pretty high profile complaint about Apple.

2. I am quite surprised about the number of failures that he lists in his blog post.

I have very little experience with Apple’s products, although I know a number of people who absolutely love them.

For my part, I’ve never found a compelling reason to switch from the Microsoft world to Apple, mainly because my work environment is 100% Microsoft and I’m very comfortable with that.

It does concern me that Mike is using his personal experience as the yardstick to base a significant part of his opinion. However, he isn’t alone in expressing these opinions.

For my part, I’ll be curious to see if Apple reacts publicly to Mike’s article. My gut says no, but we’ll see.

Following up on my recent confession of being a Google Reader junkie, I’ve discovered that a blog has risen near to the top of my Google Reader Shared Items trends. I’ve circled the curious item in the image above.

How did it slip in there like that without my noticing? Perhaps it has some kind of stealthy properties.

It seems sneaky, better watch that one, folks.