responsibility and life in public

I wrote a while ago about the positive aspects of public living via blog. (For me anyway.) But I'd not really thought about the scarier aspects of it - like presenting in front of lots of other bloggers and waiting for the reviews to come in. On the whole people seem to have liked it, and they took better notes than I would have, but a couple of them gave me a little nudge to remember to deliver more than stuff I've already said on the blog. Good thought to hang on to.

(And I'd like to say again how grateful I was for all the help and enthusiasm from everyone there. These planning.ro pictures really captured the mood of the trip for me, thanks for the chat Costin.)

On a related note, I bumped into John Griffiths in the Apple store yesterday. We went for a coffee and talked about Romania. He was there a few months back and he told me that someone had said that our blogs were, basically, their entire planning training.

(another blogging loop coming up)

Firstly, that's obviously a tremendous honour, but secondly, it's also quite a responsibility and it made me realise I need to attach some sort of health warning to some of my posts. I often throw out thoughts on here just because they seem interesting, and to see what they look like out of my head, but it doesn't mean people should take them too seriously.

Maybe I should have a star system where Five Stars mean sensible advice that might be useful in the real world and One Star means random stuff I've made up to annoy Richard Huntington, not to be mentioned to actual clients under any circumstances.

I suspect most of my posts will be Ones or Twos. But I think most of the APSotW stuff is safe enough for public consumption.

Comments

[Richard]

I think this is a really interesting issue. The plannersphere maybe the sum total of planning training in Romania but it is not far off in the UK. If you are a junior planner you'd be better advised to immerse yourself in this environment for free than badger your employers to let you go on some half arsed formal training course.

Blogging threatens the very existence of professional bodies throughout adland.

[Rob Mortimer]

And even then, the blogosphere helps us know which are the good books to read, and the good examples to follow!

Will be nice when it finally pays off for me! ;)

[Carol]

Blogging is a brave and noble act as well as downright foolish. The best blogs/letters/writing allow you to live with someone you admire for a while, metaphorically speaking!

Besides Russell, it's always a joy to read you.