infobong.com

Since I'm blogging about not blogging, I might as well mention that I'll be speaking on a panel discussion titled "Blogs, Blogs, Blogs" on Friday as part of the Transparencies technology and culture conference. Although its tempting to fill up 15 minutes about not blogging, I frankly don't think that will cut the mustard. If you're in Austin, and you wanna check it out (its free), the panel is at 1PM in the Chicano Culture Room of the Texas Union.

I've gotta say I was a little chagrined when I saw the titles of the other papers at the conference. For some time I've felt a little dorky using titles, where I saw something cutesy, insert a colon, and then actually describe the paper. For example, I titled a paper something like, "Geek Your Mind: Weblogs and Personal Publishing Online." Its fun to come up with those titles, but it just seems so... presumptuous.

Then I read this article in The Chronicle of Higher Education criticizing the colon-title format, and I vowed to concoct descriptive, concise, and, most of all, colon-less titles. I was pressed for time when I needed to come up with a title for my blog presentation for Transparencies, and I discovered it is surprisingly difficult to come up with a simple title for a paper. I racked my brain for a few hours, finally coming up with "Social Aspects of Weblogs." However, the other panelists at the conference seem comfortable with the long colonic titles, and now I feel small and puny with my four-word title.