Why Blog a Project?

Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork

Claire Chaundy starts a brilliant post about the benefits of blogging with this question: What happens when you replace the word “blogging” with “thinking”?

Yes! …or “blogging” with “taking action”? And what if you mix the them instead?

Claire goes on to offer this list:

• Blogging helps you to notice what you are noticing in the world and leads you to question why that is
• Blogging tests your commitment to what you believe your passions are
• Blogging expands your own and other people’s minds and ultimately contributes to the learning and development of society
• Blogging removes boundaries and traditional sources of power and introduces a new currency: your thoughts
• Blogging is about thinking, not necessarily journalism.
• Blogs are the chaff not the wheat. What you post in your blog isn’t necessarily the most important thing, it’s that you’ve done some thinking.

Translate these into project terms… Blogging helps you and others notice what you’re accomplishing. It tests your commitment, and demonstrates it. Expands your own and other people’s action. Blogging removes boundaries and invites new sources and forms of support. Blogging is about showing up with your passion, not necessarily your credentials. And the news you post in a project blog may not rock the world, but it will show that you’re doing what you can, making an effort, taking a stand.

I’m especially partial to what she says about blogging introducing a new currency. I wrote a lot about this in the early days of developing sCNN. If a market like sCNN really works, it means that individuals bring their story into the world and couple it with a request for readers to become supporters, sponsors, direct funders of their projects. This literally turns story into currency. Cash. Project funding.

This is what the central bank of every nation does… bring the story of the nation’s needs for project financing, the project being the running of a government and a society, and ask people to fund it. In the case of those markets, we talk use words like offerings, debt, bonds and interest.

So many of the words work here in sCNN terms, too. A blogger offers a story about a project for the common good, asks for support, for funding. When money is provided, it’s not a gift… it’s a loan. There is a debt. Action is due. Some return provided. More news. Action. Bonds are made and must be serviced. If interest can’t be sustained, the pool of funders dries up.

sCNN is a blogging market for the common good, where project stories can be offered and funding requests floated. Bonds created, interest paid, debts serviced. What do you have to offer? Links can be emailed for posting here. Financial support can be provided via the new DropCash campaign link in the sidebar.

If this all seems a bit of a linguistic stretch, then consider a simpler version at Fourobouros: blogs are the new business card.

technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews