A few days back I posted a fragment arguing that blogging is good for your career, which has become, I believe, the most-linked-to item in the history of ongoing. While it was universally ignored by all the media outlets that have been gravely intoning “Blog and yer fired”, there were reactions, some quite remarkable.
Sam Ruby pointed out, quite correctly I think, that my title, It’s Not Dangerous, was at best disingenuous, although that wasn’t the word he used, and I can’t disagree with the rest of his post either.
Rui Carmo over at The Tao of Mac (and is his page header great or what?), in Ten Reasons Why Blogging Doesn’t Matter, thoughtfully disagrees with just over half of my Ten Reasons Why Blogging Is Good For Your Career; I tried to count exactly how many, but found myself going “4½, 5¼” and so on.
I really disagree with Rui on points #3 (decision-makers do respect Google-karma), #5 (you become better-informed because people write to point out your mistakes), and #9 (yes, marketing pros are indeed starting to take blogs seriously); but I think these are things where reasonable people may disagree, reasonably.
Rui’s take on my points #1 and #2 (Blogging gets you noticed, hence more likely to be hired/promoted) is more interesting. He is a bit more cynical, a bit more old-fashioned, almost Japanese (“the nail that sticks out is the one that gets bashed down”) in flavour. While I disagree (I’ve seen lots of second-rate people get promoted over more effective ones simply because they were more visible), Rui’s points are worth thinking over in the context of wherever it is you work.
And Now For Something Completely Different · Why is this fragment entitled “Pure Black Flame”? That would be a reference to a piece by an entity referring to itself as “Wenzit Du” (get it?), a fellow Vancouverite it seems, entitled Steaming Coil Soup. No summary by me (or anyone) could possibly do it justice; really an outstanding specimen of its kind.
And, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, if you’re gonna do something like this, follow Wenzit’s example and don’t tell the world your real name.
