Meta Post - Still the beginning
Well, its come to that time when we all get ready to party and leave Canberra ASAP. Yes, that’s right, it’s the end of semester. HOORAY!! So what does that mean? It means its time to reflect on this NMP unit, what I’ve leant and how it has impacted me.
My three nominated blog posts to demonstrates what i’ve learnt are:
This blog was my first ever attempt at blogging, and I think I have come along way from the beginning. My first ever blog post was titled ‘the beginning of a new era’ and I think this title is a great reflection of the progress I have made throughout this unit, especially with regard to my blog. I know that when I wrote his first post I was certain that this beginning would have an end and that this assignment would have little impact on me. I mean how hard could it be to write one blog post every week? Easy 30% … I had severely underestimated the value of a blog and of blogging and, when I wrote this post, had no understanding of networks or connectivity and I certainly had no idea what I was in for.
The blogging journey – At the start of this unit I hated blogging. It turned out not to be so simple writing a blog each week. This was because it wasn’t just writing, it was reflecting. It was demonstrating what I had learnt, what I had taken from this knowledge, and how I would apply it in my world. It was facing up to the fact that perhaps I didn’t know as much about the internet (the thing I use every day) as I thought I did.
As time went on, I continued to struggle with the reflection, but I found myself drawn in to the social side of it all. I began following people, customising my blog, commenting on others work, and before in knew it I was creating a network. The best bit was I was doing it without even trying. I was drawing traffic to my blog by connecting links to places all over the web, socializing with other bloggers by commenting on images, adding to internet content by adding my own thoughts and work and becoming involved with all sorts of networked media aspects, such as multiplicity by re-blogging the work of others. I was connecting people and information from all over the web and all over the world, simply by linking anything and everything. Each link provided a connection, which provided further resources which contributed to this network which was created through my blog.
Just quietly, I was kind of enjoying myself too!
Realistically, this mini network I created was just that, mini. I made it into the top 50,000 blogs which is a pretty lame milestone (although I enjoyed it regardless). I think that the scale of my blogs popularity is not a evaluation of its connectivity (which I consider to be very solid), but rather its content and audience. The content of my blog, being mainly computer talk about all things covered in the lectures and readings, stories of personal progress, and bits and pieces I discovered along the way (all of course relating to the NMP unit). This of course has a very niche target audience. The audience mainly consists of other students who are checking to see if they are up to speed, and lecturers checking to see if I’m up to speed, and I suppose anyone else who happens to link their way through out of personal interest. I think that it is this value of entertainment, socialising and personality that makes a popular blog and by restricting content you in turn restrict your audience. I think this is shown through the popularity increase in my blog as I added more entertaining content and personalised my blog by suiting it to my style and adding extra aspects of me personally to it, such as my flickr account and my last.fm info. This gives depth to the actually NMP content which makes it more interesting to viewers. But by tying to avoid adding too much personal stuff that did not relate to the unit, for the lecturers viewing sake (ok I know, so pedo horse and yoda dog made it through the filter … but for good reason), I lowered the amount of personalisation through aspects such as reblogging data that could easily be duplicated and passed on, I in turn further decreased the audience for my blog.
I also began to understand the value of the blog and blogging. Blogging for me, as much as it caused distress at first, helped me to evaluate what I had learnt, how it applied to me and to think critically about these new concepts. Although I sometimes found it hard to verbalise what I was discovering, things were clicking, cogs where turning and, yes I’ll say it, I was learning stuff. Relevant stuff. Useful stuff. As a designer, and a member of the Gen-Y posse, all this ‘stuff’ could totally be applied to assist me in terms of my career and my passion. I was finding blogs which provided inspiration, I was sharing my work and my abilities with a diverse range of people regardless of their location. I was connecting myself to people with similar interests and through all of this I saw the value that blogging could have not just as a social tool, but for business. Especially useful for my field in which most jobs are gained through word of mouth and through connections, and better yet its free.
Overall I think my blog is a perfect example networked media. Structurally, it creates a networking by bringing together different media types, such as video and audio, from all different sources, such as YouTube and the blogs of others, and by connecting information to relevant sources via links. Functionally, it creates a network based upon personal interest, such as my personal interests in what I reblog, who I follow or what I comment on, and through the personal interest of the viewer, such as which path of links they chose to follow, or which posts they chose to comment on. I am happy with what I have achieved throughout this unit, using multiple blogging platforms, customizing multiple blogs (including changing styles, adding commments, and adding extras such as followers), incorporating all kinds of media and API’s. I think I have learnt a fair bit along the way, but there is still much further I could go with my blog and I plan to make a separate blog for my design stuff and hopefully share it with the world.
So, back to that first post. It was the beginning of a new era, it was something new and fantastic, but it is still just the beginning.
