megahugeblogwhy


 * Why I started this list**

I would not be able to keep up with my reading if it were not for RSS and other [|information coping skills]. I also follow quite a few blogs that are outside of the nonprofit technology field and will eventually add them here. Many times, I'm asked by newbiews what is the best way to get started is finding blogs to read. My advice is to find one or two blogs that you really find useful and then gradually add blogs that are referenced by that blog and that you find enjoyable.

Another reason I started this list is because I experience memory lapses. I used to have a photographic memory, but it has dimmed with [|age] In my younger years, I could easily remember phone numbers, urls, addresses, people names, or what I ate for lunch. I can't do that anymore as easily which is a normal part of aging.

It is extremely frustrating for someone who used to rely on her memory and never developed coping skills like writing stuff down or being organized. //**I hate it when I can't instantly pull facts out of my brain.**// Over the past few months, I've noticed that when I'm writing, and I think of someone's blog, but I don't have the URL at hand I can't remember it! I find myself stumbling. I go to my blogreader and then I get distracted or I can't quickly extract it from del.ici.ous because I didn't tag it carefully or I can't quite remember the correct name of the blog. I remember where or when or if I blogged about it. But, you see, it is taking too long to retreive the URL and I really want to link to it. So, I thought if I put a list of the blogs that read and would like to link to in a blog post, it would be an efficient way for me to grab the url.

So, this list is not a finished product meant for wide spread consumption. It's a work in progress for myself. I put on a wiki for easy maintenance and for whoever stumbles upon it and might find it useful as I believe in open content and open thinking. Admittedly, it is probably only useful to me in its current state. I could have password protected it and just kept it to myself, but I am lazy - it would have put an extra step to type in the password.

Of course, I have fantasies about a zagats guide to nonprofit blogs, a collaborative effort built on a wiki. Hey, that's another reason why it is on the wiki, you can come help because I don't have time right now. For many years, I taught web development and building - in the very early days of the web. I used to do an exercise with students called "critical browsing" - have them look at web sites based on criteria and discuss the web sites. http://www.bethkanter.org/rit/design/designprinciples.html (note it is really old)

So, my wild fantasy would be a wiki with:

a-critieria of what makes a good blog b-list of blogs, with descriptions, organized by categories c-some sort of social rating system against whatever critical identified in point a - to do it right would take some programming skills.