Blog Day

I noted last Friday that I do not usually post on Friday’s and then proceeded to do so. A habit may be forming, for today I was reminded by Michele Martin at The Bamboo Project that it is Blog Day, and that seemed like a good reason to write a Friday post.

According to the Blog Day site, “Blog Day was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On that day Bloggers will recommend other blogs to their blog visitors.” To achieve this aim, participating bloggers are supposed to find 5 new sites and recommend them.

While I like the spirit and the viral quality of the whole thing, I don’t plan to adhere to the rules entirely. I write Mission to Learn with a particular audience in mind, and I assume that visitors come here expecting to find useful ideas and resources related to the use of online learning and social media technologies by mission-driven organizations. It doesn’t seem appropriate, therefore, to stray too far into left field with my blog recommendations. That said, I’ve thrown in a couple of blogs that probably would not show up at Mission to Learn under “normal” circumstances. Hey, it’s Friday.

One last note: For all but the first and last of these, I took the approach of visiting blogs that I visit quite frequently and selecting a blog from each one’s blogroll. This seemed to be a good way of expanding the network along the lines of related interests. So, here goes:

The Bamboo Project: This is Michele Martin’s (of first paragraph above fame) blog. As she notes in her “About” area, it started as a resource to help nonprofits and government organizations operate more effectively and efficiently, but it has become more than that over time. I had stumbled across the Bamboo Project in the past but have spent a good bit of time there in the past few days because of Michele’s writings on professional development and learning.

Get Me Jamie Notter: The blog covers the current thinking of—yep, you guessed it, Jamie Notter—about organizations, leadership, and human dynamics. Jamie has a particular interest in how generational differences factor into these areas. I had actually heard about his blog at Bloggercon, arranged by Ben Martin at this year’s ASAE annual meeting, but I arrived at it for the first time today by clicking through from Dave Sabol’s Associated Knowledge Blog.

Outside Innovation: This is Patty Seybold’s blog dedicated to “How your customers will re-design your company’s future,” which is a line of thinking I happen to particularly like. I got to this one by clicking through from Jeff De Cagna’s Principled Innovation blog.

Agroblogger: This is the first one in the list that veers a bit from standard Mission to Learn material. It was two clicks removed from David Houle’s Evolution Shift blog and it focuses on ” promoting some of the fundamental principles of localism and sustainability, advocating for the adoption of organic agriculture, Open Source models, Free Software, Fair Trade, permaculture, and appropriate technology.” Sustainable agriculture, local farming, and the use of appropriate technology (which often means low, or “intermediate” technology instead of high technology) are areas in which I am particularly interested.

The Strat-O-Blogster Guitar Blog: Finally, leaving standard Mission to Learn territory far behind me, I offer you a blog dedicated to one of the greatest guitars of Rock n’ Roll history—the Fender Stratocaster. Clapton plays one; Hendrix played one; and yours truly is on a mission to learn how to play one better.

So there you have it. TGIF

JTC

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