Presenting “Miss Rogue.”
My November column for the Edmontonians Magazine will be about blogging. I’ve only been given 500 words this month. It seems my first article (Pg 10) was reported to be entertaining, if not a bit “long-winded.” Of course, anyone who knows me well knows that’s completely “in” character for me. I don’t know – you tell me what you think and weigh in on the picture too.
I wanted my next effort to have a key interview or two, providing you the audience with a nice change from my usual self-indulgent approach. After some thought (environmentalists will be happy to know that no smoke appeared during my thought process), I wanted to reach out to some serious blogging enthusiasts. One of those picked was Chris Pirillo, the self-proclaimed “geek” behind Gnomedex – a blogging conference to see if he’d be willing to answer a few questions for my article. Chris replied, “What questions?” I emailed six questions to him, and they must have offended him as I’m still waiting for a response. Most likely, though, he’s just very busy.
Having said that, I’m under a deadline, and Barb the editor would have had my guts for garters if I didn’t get a move on. So as I usually do in these situations, I picked more than one interviewee to touch base with for just such a time-crunch occasion. So who’s the lucky duck? None other than Tara “Miss Rogue” Hunt of Horsepigcow.com fame. Given that she’s in Lisbon at the moment, we opted for an email exchange to save on the cell bill and Skype break-up. Below is a short excerpt from our email chat.
W: Do you think micro-blogging, in this case, Twitter with it’s growing notoriety is reducing the overall relevancy of the personal blog?
TH: I don’t know if relevancy will be reduced, but, in my case anyway, frequency is reduced. I know a large number of bloggers who post less because they are able to share their ideas quickly and succinctly on Twitter. However, once I’ve had a rigorous conversation on Twitter and ideas come together more coherently, I put them into a blog post. I no longer meander around ideas on my blog. I meander around ideas on Twitter, then post more solid content to my blog. So, in the end, the relevancy is actually increased on my blog because every time I post, it’s been thought out more than it used to be.
W: What are you doing in Lisbon at the moment? Business, a conference?
TH: I’m speaking at SHiFT08: It’s awesome because now that I’ve been on the speaking circuit for 2.5 years, I know many of the other speakers. Brilliant folks. It’s amazing how our ideas start to flow together, too.
The rest of my interview with Miss Rogue will appear in next month’s Edmontonians Magazine edition. I’d like to thank Tara “Miss Rogue” Hunt for her time and responding so promptly from the road during an international event where she’s presenting. A true pro.
