We took our daughter to the St. Louis stop on the Steve Gadd drum clinic tour last night. She’s been taking drum lessons for three years and clearly has both strong interest and talent.
Grace had to tolerate me telling her that Steve Gadd really was a drum legend when I first saw a poster for the show and then me occupying her teacher’s time talking about Steve Gadd. In spite of the embarrassment I may have caused, she still wanted to go to the drum clinic.
It was fun, it was educational, and it was amazing. I realized that I haven’t taken enough advantage lately of the chances to see any great artist or expert in any field when you have the chance. If you have the chance to catch a stop on this tour, even if you think you have no interest in drums or drummers, you will want to catch this show. There are still a few dates left.
Gadd had just celebrated his 60th birthday and there was such a great vibe in the room. The show was sold out and I’ve never been in a place with so many drummers in my life. It’s clear that they revere Gadd and, as he patiently answered questions, and showed techniques and played some of his signature drum tracks, it became clear why that is the case. I was as impressed with his generosity as much as his tremendous skill and ability.
I enjoyed all of his talk about finding the groove and his effort to find an ego-less approach. I don’t pretend to know much about drumming, but I was in awe of some of the things he did. I also loved the way he played with a fluidity where the sticks and gravity clearly were doing most of the work.
Great stuff. Inspiring. A view into a different way of seeing and thinking. We all had a great time. For some reason, though, every song I heard on the radio today sounded like the drumming needed a lot more work.
[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (https://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]
DennisKennedy.Blog Celebrates Thirteenth Birthday
Long-time readers of this blog will know that today is the blawgiversary of DennisKennedy.Blog. I started this blog on February 15, 2003, and we (my blog and me) are marking its thirteenth birthday today. That makes DennisKennedy.Blog a teenager. Much more about that in a minute.
In previous years, I marked the week of the blogiversary with a weeklong combined celebration of my blog’s birthday and my birthday (February 17 – shout out to birthday sharers Michael Jordan and Jim Brown). The issue of “sharing” birthday celebrations came up this year and, as you’ll notice from the title of this post, “we” decided to do something different this year.
When you have written a blog as long as I have, two things will surprise you. The first is that your blog starts to take on a life of its own and begins to talk to you, especially about its “feelings” and “needs.” The second is that you are constantly surprised which posts set off a negative reaction from readers.
This morning, we had the combination of those two things.
The problem, it seems, was yesterday’s post – a seemingly innocuous post about some of my recent writings outside the blog and some recent podcasts.
I could not have predicted the firestorm. However, when you have a new teenager, you can’t predict anything.
To make a long story short, my blog and I had what they call these days a “good talk” this morning. If you know teenagers, it won’t surprise you that words like “unfair,” “independence,” “old enough,” and the like were flying around. I also heard the word “boring” and “old man” more times than I cared to hear them.
As I now understand it, yesterday’s post hit a tender spot that I apparently have not been listening to the blog enough about. In retrospect, I get the blog’s perspective, but sheesh. Yes, the post did refer to writing I have done in places other than the blog. And, yes, I am aware that my blog sees my podcast as competition for my time, attention and best work. I now better understand why my blog found this so upsetting.
And you don’t even want to hear the comments my blog made about my use of social media.
On the other hand, I do think my best work and content lately has been on the podcast. I won’t apologize for that. I was a bit surprised, however, that my blog has been skyping with Tom Mighell’s blog and commiserating about their perceived neglect from their authors. Not to oversimplify, but they are jealous of the podcast.
For most of the discussion, if I can call it that, I listened. I also tried to make rational arguments, justifications and excuses. I also tried changing the subject and a variety of other tricks. My blog was having none of that and, I’ll admit that I’m impressed, stuck to its guns and made all of its points.
The blog even tried to get me to express my feelings and emotions.
It’s was a difficult conversation. I’m still mulling over some of the blog’s points.
One of the things that came through loud and clear is that my blog feels it deserves my most creative work. It kept returning to the point that I was no longer writing posts like the Metallica LexThink post and the Steve Gadd copyright post. And that I should be. (NIt also wants me to fix some of the internal links on the blog so that people don’t have to search for old posts using the search box at the top of the right column. I get the point.)
My blog’s contention is that posts like those are what my real audience wants and not pointers to things I’ve done in other places. Especially on my podcast. At one point, my blog literally threw a “Legal Talk Network” t-shirt across the room.
Not too surprisingly, the subject of being “old enough” for a tattoo again came up. Again.
In the past, I’ve been able to say that the blog is too young and that I make all the decisions. And my threat of getting an ear pierced and wearing an earring was a deterrent the blog on the tattoo front because it did not want to be embarrassed to death. Now, my blog seems ready to call my bluff. I’m still not convinced that my blog’s tattoo idea – a large “Cloud” with a lightning bolt that says “You only live once” is the best choice, but I understand its point that it has long been living with a photo of me “tattooed” on its front page and, even worse for it, a logo and feed for the podcast.
The bottom line. We agreed that DennisKennedy.Blog gets its own separate birthday celebration this year and going forward. We also agreed that any birthday presents to the blog will be the blog’s presents and not shared with me. Unless it wants to share – not likely.
I also agreed that I would ask readers to let us know in the comments what direction you would like to see the blog take going forward. Keep in mind, however, that my blog will see your comments before I do.
And I agreed that I needed to pay more attention to my blog and consider its feelings.
It was a difficult, contentious discussion, but a worthwhile one that will help us begin to plot a path forward.
We hugged it out at the end and said “good talk,” both nervously looking around to make sure no one was watching us.
So, I wish my blog a happy thirteenth birthday, salute it for becoming a teenager and invite you to do the same. It’s been a pleasure writing the blog all these years and I look forward to many more.
– Dennis
[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (https://denniskennedy.com/blog/)]
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LinkedIn in One Hour for Lawyers (Second Edition), the new book from Allison Shields and me, is now available (iBook version also available). Our previous book, Facebook in One Hour for Lawyers, is also available (iBook version here). Also still available, The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell.
The Land of Hope and Dreams
Long-time readers of DennisKennedy.Blog will know that I regularly listen to my iPod in the shuffle mode and sometimes notice patterns in the randomness. Yesterday was an example, I think, of an interesting pattern.
Although I did not technically get the three items I’ll mention here exactly in a row, it was close enough that I’ll take the liberty of saying that I did.
First, a PRI: Open Source podcast featuring historian Gordon Wood about the “historicness” (my term, not his) of the 2008 election. Wood made a striking comment, which I’ll paraphrase, that the young generation is looking forward to this election as a way to show that this country has finally moved beyond the era of racism, because the legacy of racism is profoundly disturbing to our younger generations. I invite you to think about that for a few minutes the next time you start a rant about whatever negative qualities of the “younger generations” happen to bother you.
This also reminded me of something I heard recently on a podcast about college age and younger students and the older technologies that we knew but they won’t ever experience. What surprises them most? It won’t be what you think. It’s that they are surprised how difficult it once was to make your opinions known to the world. That’s profound, at least to me, and why blogs and RSS have been so game-changing.
Second, my iPod served up Brue Springsteen’s “The Land of Hope and Dreams.” In my personal Springsteen canon, this song rates extremely high, especially given his tendency to perform a condensed version of Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready” within the song in some live performances.
Third, and this one did immediately follow The Land of Hope and Dreams, was the NPR On Point podcast featuring Andrew Sullivan on “Can Bloggers Save Journalism?” Andrew is at the top of his game and, if you are a blogger, you have to hear his comments, especially in the first part of the podcast. His insights are so compelling in many ways at many levels on, again, the game-changing nature of blogging. Just one example was his comment that blogging has created a new form of writing that resides somewhere between writing and speaking.
Now, I’m going to take this post in a direction that you might not expect, as I usually do.
All of these got me thinking about the “historicness” of your own blog and whether you should always stay on topic on your blog no matter what is happening outside your blog.
I’ve been blogging for nearly six years. I’ve been known to go “off topic” every now and then, although, for the most part, this blog tries to cover technology as it relates to the legal profession.
Probably the most common criticism or question I’ve gotten over the years relates to my use of personal themes and moving off-topic. Some people simply don’t understand that. I remember well how someone lit me up for actually mentioning NASCAR (in a favorable way) on a law blog. If I recall correctly, I’m still blogging and they are not. I’m just sayin’.
Ironically, some of my posts that some feel went farthest off the path (my Metalica post and the Steve Gadd copyright post) are definitely among my best-liked and most popular posts. The fact is that you learn to trust the authors of the blogs you like and are rewarded when you trust them enough to follow where they lead.
Here’s my thought for today. Our blogs live within the context of our current history and they tell a story about how we relate to that history. It’s interesting and telling to look back at what your blog said at different historic points.
And it gives you an odd feeling to see a blog post with a date of 9/11/2001, for example, that stays on topic and does not refer to the events of the day. I’m not being critical. It’s not that you can judge at any given time what the significance of a day is, but, on the other hand, it’s odd to see that at a time when something momentous was happening a blog seems to be oblivious to the historic events of the time. It would be disconcerting to look back in the future and see that during historic times in the fall of 2008, my blog might have been focused on the difficulty I was having with the Firefox awesome bar. I’m sure that you get the idea of what I mean.
Now, we are at a time of economic turmoil with potentially unprecedented impact, an election of historic proportions and other events of a magnitude that it makes it almost impossible, I’d think, for a blogger resist using his or her forum to comment on these things, even if only to make a record of what it is that you were thinking for a time when you later want to look back.
I enjoy when bloggers reach that point where they realize that they have to use their platform to talk about what matters to them, with a sense of rawness and revelation, even if it seems to be off topic. I find that compelling reading and, frankly, it makes me more willing to stick with them when they stay on topic. Four recent memorable examples for me are here, here, here and here. It’s also interesting that each of these posts is in that zone between writing and speaking, and feels closer to a speaking voice.
So, I decided today to post about the Land of Hope and Dreams rather than about legal technology and about when it’s time to stay on topic and when it’s time to leave your topic behind for a post or two.
And what will you be posting about in coming days?
[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (https://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]
Now Available! The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell. Visit the companion website for the book at LawyersGuidetoCollaboration.com.
Technorati tags: legal technology blogging topic land of hope and dreams
The Day the Internet Music Died
I urge you to read Mark Cuban’s post “Say Goodbye to Webcasting.”
Does our focus on intellectual property ownership rights have dire implications for the sharing of culture, our cultural legacy, and the sharing of arts among humans? As I once said, “I can’t dance to a copy of your copyright registration form.”
[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (https://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]
Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post – Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).
Technorati tags: webcasting copyright creativity culture sharing