TheWayoftheWeb

It’s amazing how blogging guilt can motivate a post at 10.40pm on a Monday night, but I’ve been a bit lacklustre. Mainly because I had a great weekend hanging out with my baby son, playing a little Xbox 360 (Rainbow 6: Vegas 2 is still my game of choice), and generally staying off the laptop as I’d originally planned to start rebuilding my car. But as the rains came down, the only choice was to hang out in the dry - which I duly did.

Getting back online, I was reminded how much I actually enjoyed this blog in the gap between starting to write on this new url, and finally setting up Google Analytics. Because I had no way to tell if anyone was reading - except for the occasional comment - I suddenly started relaxing and writing for myself again. No pressure to hit keywords, or make sure I updated regularly, or to increase my audience. Hopefully I can carry on in that vein, despite my foolish registrations on Technorati, Feedburner, and even the Adage Power 150, to put myself up against a large number of quality blogs.

Related to that is my reaction to the news my colleague and friend David Cushman has started regularly contributing to Stowe Boyd’s /Message. In the old days, I’d have probably felt a bit jealous if someone got picked up by a bigger print publication. But now it’s a lot easier to be magnanimous - mainly because any link from either of the two blogs now helps me far more than before!

In all seriousness, the nature and power of an increased network means that building, maintaining and valuing the success of friends, colleagues and peers suddenly becomes a lot more important than cutting ties to anyone who dares move on to other things. You never know what opportunities it may bring, and who may end up following a link to Dave, and then to here. And suddenly it really does become more about the people within a team working collaboratively, rather than always competing - and despite the hippy sentiment, it’s easy to find the value that can bring to any business.

*In a wave of productivity, there’s also a new update by me on my new group blog, 140char.com, dedicated to all microblogging. And don’t forget to subscribe via RSS if you don’t want to miss any posts here.