prod & ponder

This evening I attended a DC “blogger summit” organized by the Washington Post/Newsweek Interactive. The Post folks offered that they were not going to be reporting on the details of the event and requested bloggers consider doing the same. The idea was for open discussion, not a PR-fest. I think it was as sensible motive, and I’m going to respect the request. So no details, but let me at least offer some general praise that the Post deserves:
* I’m not naming names, but it’s worth noting that high-level WaPo folks were at the discussion. This is something the Post appears to be taking seriously.
* Bloggers were treated with respect, and Post folks seemed to be listening and genuinely curious about understanding and exploring how blogs and the Post relate to one another and where there might be opportunities for collaboration.
* They did a good job of gathering together a large and diverse set of local bloggers.

Ok, so there’s my very vague non-report and praise. I suspect other bloggers who were there will write more. After all, “off the record”—no matter what the motive—doesn’t mesh easily with blogging sensibilities.

Now, here are my two modest proposal:
1. We should have a community blogging skill share. There’s a fantastic amount of knowledge and skills in the DC blogger community, and it would be great if that could get shared. Obviously, new bloggers have lots of questions when getting started, and even experienced bloggers can find themselves thinking, “hey, what you did on your blog was really cool… how can I do something like that on mine?” We should have something to help.

I think it would be swell if the Post would sponsor an in-person skill share event (I’d be happy to volunteer a workshop or two), but it also would make sense to start a blog so that there’s a more permanent and accessible place to find the information and help. While lots of the questions and topics raised won’t be specific to DC blogging, for all sorts of pedagogical and philosophical reasons I’m a big fan of community-rooted learning.

Toward that, I just registered the domain dcblogs411.com, which should be coming online late Friday or Saturday. I’d like it to be a true community blog, with entries by a wide mix of local bloggers. Just to toss some potential topics out there:
Blogging sites and scripts; CSS tips and tricks for [insert blog software here]; Tagging: what is it and how can I use it?; Copyright law and your blog; Defamation and your blog; How to get press credentials in DC; Photography for the web; Adding video to your blog; Podcasting for bloggers; Getting connected to the DC blog community; Blogging for profit; Self & blog: issues to consider in your online identity– and… what your ideas? Again, the idea is for this to be driven by our own blogging community’s knowledge and curiosity. I’lll post a note here when the dcblogs411 domain becomes active. Please start considering what topic you think would be helpful and which topics you could contribute an entry about.

2. My second modest proposal (and this one is something totally out of my hands): maybe we should start a local set of shared community tags for our postings. This would make it easier to locate and integrate material from bloggers in our local community. Moreover, if the Post wants to go down this road, it would also be a nice way (with some additional checks) to locate and share content to and from the paper.

If you want an example of the power and simplicity of this, think of the “dcist” tag we started on flickr for photos that (a) are of the DC region, (b) are by DC photogs, and (c) that have the implied permission for publication on DCist. It’s become wildly popular, with a huge amount of daily contributions (and that’s even with a self-imposed throttle on daily submissions by individuals). What if we had similar shared and unique tags for more types and topics of DC blogger-generated content.

It would takes some coordination to generate a common list of tags. Personally, I think this would be a swell place for the Post to start playing a constructive role in the DC blogging community. I wouldn’t recommend any grand scheme or taxonomy of local DC content tags. Start small and simple and build support. The Post is already trying to look through local blogs for content, and many local blogs would like the exposure of being mentioned. So let’s make it easier for all involved and pick some tags that bloggers can use for material that we think the Post might be interested in. Just WaPo or the like perhaps?

Slowly, we might build up some more detailed tags. e.g.: dcCommunityPetworth, dcCommunityShaw etc. for community news stories in those areas; dcSportBaseball, etc. for sports… you get the idea.

The idea is to build a common list of tags that we can use, and that are unique in being community-defined and directed.

Ok, there you have it… my two modest proposals.