Ideas of March

Chris Shiflett posted a call to arms recently about the way Twitter has affected the amount and the way we use blogs. He makes the very valid points that it’s hard to find signal amidst the noise of Twitter, and to find resources later or follow the thread of conversation relating to any given topic is near-impossible.

“If we all blog a little more than we normally would this month, maybe we can be reminded of all of the reasons blogs are great.”

When I was first getting interested in Web design and development, blogs were my insight into the worlds and minds of Eric Meyer, Jeffrey Zeldman, Molly Holzschlag and many more – I was going to add Tantek Çelik to this list; imagine my disappointment when I discovered his site is now nothing more than a Twitter stream. It was on blogs that I first discovered so many useful CSS techniques and hacks, some now long outdated, some I still use to this day.

Vitaly Friedman has posted a Smashing article entitled “Dear Web Design Community, where have you gone?” – I think the answer to that is inextricably linked to this post. We spend our time grunting monosyllabic tweets at each other rather than engaging in the measured discourse of yesteryear. There’s a place for Twitter in our interactions, but it shouldn’t replace the blogs that nurtured, informed and once connected us all.

For that reason, I pledge to blog more in 2011 than I did in 2010.