Blog day!

I was a bit busy, so I kind of missed blogday - a day to put the zoom lens on this growing phenomenon. To be honest, I haven't really encountered 5 new blogs lately, particularly not outside of my sphere of interest, so I guess I'm just breaking the rules all around. Then again, I recently posted comprehensively on the blogs I read, so I think I have that base fairly well covered.

Those of my colleagues and friends who don't blog tend to think of blogging as the pursuit of an egotist. My experience has been very different. My experience has been that bloggers... or edubloggers, at any rate... are the most extraordinarily generous people. Generous with their knowledge, their experience, their feedback. These people have identified that it makes good knowledge economy sense (and therefore good fiscal sense) to keep the flow of knowledge open. A bit like the Biblical distinction between cisterns and fountains (Jeremiah 2:13, if you're interested).

The other view I encounter quite often is that we are a sad bunch of people with no real friends. I'm sure there are bloggers with no friends, real or... whatever the opposite of that is, just as I am sure that there are non-bloggers in the same boat. The contacts I have made online did not start out being people I looked on as friends. They were more like colleagues, peers or classmates. However, over time, in much the same way as office-based colleagues have a habit of doing, some of them have moved into the realms of what might be termed friendship. I have met very few of the people whose blogs I read, but even among those I have never met, I have encountered a genuine interest in the things that are going on in my life - commiseration when things go badly, congratulation when I achieve something, encouragement when I am hoping for or striving for something.

Among these are Harold Jarche, Vicki Davis, Wendy Wickham, Doug Belshaw and Janet Clarey. Although these aren't new, they do make up five, so I'll draw line under it there. Here's to another year of blogging and to absent friends - may they join us in this space soon!