Proper blogging and proper planning

 

(picture from Russell)
You may have seen the plea for a return for proper blogging. I miss the so called 'golden age of blogging' too, before everything got short, Twitterised, Facebooked and Posterouserised. I miss slightly longer bits of thinking and the conversations that followed.

 

Blogging has enabled me to meet people I wouldn't otherwise, online it's true, but also in real life. I'm too shy to introduce myself to people I don't know at conferences and certainly wouldn't ask to meet someone for coffee I've never met, but blogging let me do those things and made (and still makes) me feel closer to the whole planning fraternity thing, which is something you don't get from doing this job in Sheffield. That's why I still muck around on Rob's blog everyday, I go where there will be others, and I feel I know Rob to some extent, even though I've never met him.

Writing a blog is a little like those psychometric tests they put graduates through in the 90's (and still do for all I know), where, no matter how hard you try to avoid it, you're real personality emerges. Writing a lot of posts over time paints a rich picture of the person, which is why I've always found it easy to talk to bloggers when I meet them - I know them already and they are how they write. Funny that.

Anyway, like I said, I miss all that and within this found something to start writing about again. Proper, rigorous planning stuff. It's all well and good banging on about ephemeral planning wonkery, which still pervades most planning blogs and wider stuff, but few talk about the basic enough. I enjoyed doing that for a while and then tailed off a bit. I'd like to talk about the stuff that really takes up a planners day to day, stuff people should find useful no  matter what country or agency they are at.

Of course, this will be punctuated by the usual bollocks on tea, swimming and cooking.

Comments

[Rob Mortimer]

Re: Tea, swimming and cooking - we wouldn't have it any other way!