I’m so pleased to be speaking with Jeff “Law Tech Guru” Beard at BlawgThink. Jeff and I first met when we co-presented at a session at the 1998 ABA TECHSHOW and immediately became good friends. Anyone who’s ever attended a presentation by Jeff knows what a great presenter he is. I’m looking forward to working with him again.
The session we are doing is called “Tag, you’re it. Using Flickr, OPML, De.licio.us, Rojo, and other cutting-edge tools to supercharge your blog.” Matt and I conceived of this session as the “advanced blogging tools” session.
If you’ve seen me present, you know that the more technical and advanced the topic is, the more I try to focus on fundamental principles and how you can use the technology, rather than delving into the technical details.
So, although Jeff and I will be doing a survey of some advanced blogging tools, I want to focus on three fundamental concepts about these tools and why you might want to use them.
I see three categories of these tools:
1. Tools that allow you to improve your audience’s experience through benefits or features that require little additional effort on the part of the blogger. An example would be Flickr, which lets you add pictures to your blog experience by means of a simple to use service rather than by learning coding, programming or FTP-ing.
2. Tools that make your blog and your posts more findable and accessible with little additional effort on the part of the blogger. Examples would be Del.icio.us and Technorati tagging.
3. Tools that allow you to collaborate and help create a useful collection of valuable resources with little additional effort on the part of the blogger. Using OPML to share your RSS feed subscriptions, Rojo (and other RSS sharing services) and Rollyo custom search engines are examples in this category.
I think that this set of three categories is a helpful way to think about the various tools out there. I welcome any comments on this approach and suggestions of your favorite tools in each categories and/or useful tips for these tools.
Matt and I were talking, as we do every day, about BlawgThink and we are happy with where things stand. We’re ready to focus on making the event experience as good as we can make it and ready to bring the invitation, registration and sponsor solicitation process to a close. It does look like we’ ll able to accommodate some more attendees and we’ll do everything we can to include others who want to attend – just let us know – but our focus is turning to the event, the sessions, and what I’m sure will be an amazing and unforgettable Day 2 of BlawgThink. I can’t wait to see everyone there.
[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (https://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]
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