September 20, 2008

2008 Blogworld Expo - Milblog Conference (Update)

Relevance is the topic of the day.

How do we as a community stay relevant and more importantly, how do we determine our relevance?

CJ of A Soldier’s Perspective noted and I think this is the core of why we do what we do…”I write for myself… My posts will, always be relevant as long as I have a sense of purpose for why I write.”

I think this is the core sense of our being as a community, relevance is not some metric we can capture on a chart, it is not how many readers we have, but it is rather why do we write, why do we spend time away from family and friends to do this “hobby.” It’s at the same time greater than the individual but also only because of the individual that we can continue doing this and our relevance will continue long after we either come home from the front or move to a new local.

Our relevance is based upon what we do with our writing, what influences we exert upon our small circle of influence as Matt Burden calls it, is more important than the number of readers we have or our ranking in the blogosphere, and yet, those things also help us to influence others. It is in a sense the classic conundrum.

Are we relevant?

It’s a question I ask myself every day. Do we really do some good with our chore? Coming here to the conference will confirm in anyone that yes we do, do some good and yes we are relevant.

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