The Beauty of the Blogosphere

Spoiler Alert:  You've got to watch the video at the end of this post!  (But first, read the post!)  The beauty of the blogosphere is that in a few minutes you can connect a lot of dots, you can be influenced by ideas beyond your imagination, you can be exposed to creativity that you'd never even know existed...and it's really quite an extraordinary thing.  It's free.  It's limited only by your own ability to see relevance or connection.  It's an amazing resource that has the potential to put you right in the audience at the most incredible gatherings of some of the world's most creative people.  Really, really, amazing.

And it's easy to begin.  One of the things you can do is subscribe to a few blogs that are outside of your normal niche.  I don't know what your normal niche is, but the infusion of variety is important for all of us and it's easy to begin this experiment in the blogosphere.  Right now I have 66 feeds (blogs) that I've added to Bloglines (which is a free blog-reader).  I've got what you'd expect (strategists, leaders, business writers, etc.).  But I've also got blogs by some very different people.  One of the most interesting and enjoyable blogs is by Kathy Sierra, who is a writer in the computer field (that such an understatement but you get the idea).  Her blog is a constant source for some very thought-provoking content.  And you can subscribe to StrategyCentral.  It's easy.  (Click here and I'll tell you how to do it)

As an example of the richness of the blogosphere, in Kathy's post over the weekend she mentions a great presentation by Sir Ken Robinson at this years TED.  What is TED?  You can see what it's about here.  Honestly, I'd never heard of it.  And I had no idea who Sir Ken Robinson was.  But I've read enough of Kathy's posts over the last year to know that it was at least worth a quick look.  And what a great 15 minutes!  You've got to take a look yourself.  Whatever you're doing, stop what you're doing and check out this presentation from Sir Ken Robinson.  You can watch it right here.  Let me know what you think!