Connecting with CEOs
I really connected to much that CEO Craig Barrett of Intel said in his keynote speech at NECC. Then today I ran across this blog, Sifry’s Alerts. David Sifry is the founder and CEO of Technorati. I don’t believe any other medium gives us this up close and personal view of the thinking of CEOs and others quite like blogs do. On his post, Technorati tracks 3 million blogs, he provides the following snippets:
We’re currently seeing anywhere from 8,000-17,000 new weblogs created every single day. On an average weekday, we’re seeing over 15,000 new weblogs created per day. That means that a new weblog is created somewhere in the world every 5.8 seconds.
The number of conversations are increasing. We’re seeing over 275,000 individual posts every day. That means that on average, more than 3 blogs are updated every second.
One of the things that drives me personally is that weblogs are turning us all into producers, creators, and participants in our society, not just consumers. A Forrester Research report asked Internet users which activities they were spending less time doing in order to spend time at their computers. 78% of the people polled said that they gave up television viewing. A study from The Georgia Institute of Technology’s Graphic, Visualization and Usability Center showed a clear shift in media habits with more than one third of respondents saying that they “use the Web instead of watching TV on a daily basis.”
Now for my Independence Day message: We’re connecting with each other, we’re talking to each other, finding people of similar interests, and we’re having conversations. My dear hope is that this is the beginning of a rebirth of civics in America. Much in the same way that email revived the lost art of letter writing, Blogs are reviving the lost art of civilized civic dialogue - of argument, of well reasoned thought and response. And 3 million people (heck, even if you only assume that it is only 1.65 Million people, given the current abandonment rate) participating in worldwide civic discourse puts hope into my heart.
Aha! Another CEO to connect to! It really gives you new perspectives when you can be a part of the open dialogue from so many different voices. I don’t think we have a complete grasp of how the open nature of weblogs and all the different dialogues are going to shape our future. I know a lot of people still are not into these “conversations” and I also know that we have yet to harness the true power of it in our classrooms, but more and more each day I realize that the main reason I’m blogging is to learn. In addition, I want to enable our students to have a voice in this journey and learn right along with us. The focus of learning with technology through reading, writing, responding and reflecting on weblogs gives me hope.
David Sifry also posted this update:
Update: Mary Hodder points out that not all blogs that are inactive are abandoned. In a private IM, she wrote that “people use them for very different reasons.. archive for annual event..conferences or vacations or whatever, that happen periodically and months may go by with little posting, but the postings are important and need to be searched.. until the next trip or event..”
This is something we need to mention as we discuss weblogs. All of the collaborations, journeys of learning that span a school year, or course, or project in education are excellent models to leave “unattended” so that others can benefit from the process. Some of my best learning has taken place on these “inactive but in my view, not abandoned, weblogs.”
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