Weekend recap

One of the main criticisms I’ve had to field from my civilian friends is that my blog has become too tech/social media oriented, and that I’ve written much less about my personal life. Surprisingly enough, many tech people have told me that my blog is very personal. I can’t win!

At any rate, this weekend was a very good mix of civilian and social media life. By social media life I don’t mean that I actually did any social media event coverage, I just hung out with friend I’ve met through my blogging.

Thursday, after drinks with Lorraine and Dale, where we had a chance to see Simon (worth recapping on their own post) and dinner with Degan (restaurant review also forthcoming), and the live blog of Vancouver 2010 indie media centre meeting, I was really exhausted.

Friday was a good civilian day, spent most of the day a bit sick and in between naps, but luckily I managed to still go out at night. Saturday I had coffee with Lorraine at the Ovaltine, then coffee with Jonathon Narvey and Joe Solomon at JJ Beans, then dinner with Ianiv and Arieanna and a bunch of other social media and non-socmed folks at Earl’s Paramount (restaurant review forthcoming), and finally a Saint Nicholas party with Oana and Matt and a few other folks.

Today, I am basically out of commission as it’s my traditional JT evening and I’m going to spend most of the morning dealing with personal stuff such as laundry, etc. Hope you all are having a great weekend!

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December 7th, 2008 in personal life | tags: personal life

Comments (5)

jayDecember 7th, 2008 at 10:45 am

You’re such social butterfly.

Robert BallantyneDecember 7th, 2008 at 12:43 pm

Raul wrote, “One of the main criticisms I’ve had to field from my civilian friends is that my blog has become too tech/social media oriented, and that I’ve written much less about my personal life.”

People love to pigeon-hole (characterize or stereotype) other people. Sometimes we offer to other people suggestions as to how we might like to be characterized. A person with a wide variety of interests, plus some knowledge and experience, might be hard to characterize in this way. I suspect that would be true of you.

Does this blog, then, reflect one theme or interest, or does it reveal your current thoughts on whatever currently interests you?

Perhaps I can understand the confusion. The sub-heading for the blog explains: “The random thoughts of a specialist in environmental issues.” One might expect that the blog would focus on environmental issues.

What, in fact, is the main theme of this blog? I am not prepared to do an in-depth study… but I did look at the last 10 posts to see if there was an obvious thread.

1. Weekend recap {personal observation}
2. Music – Sneaky Sound System – Pictures (Tonite Only Remix) {personal observation}
3. WordCamp Whistler site live {social media}
4. Sixth Photo Meme Redux {personal observation}
5. BC Digital Divide – Bridging the computer literacy chasm {technology}
6. Collaborative efforts in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics indie media gathering {social media}
7. Tip # 5 – Delegate, subcontract or get an assistant {advice}
8. Restaurant review – The Alibi Room (Gastown) {restaurant review}
9. VANOC 2010 Indie Social Media Meeting Liveblog {social media}
10. Tip # 4 : Use your technology wisely! {advice}

Rather than use your categories or tags (which I didn’t find too revealing) I made up my own characterizations. I realize that is the second weakness in this study (the first being the small sample size).

To summarize my observations:

3 – personal observation
3 – social media
2 – advice
1 – restaurant review
1 – technology

So, I have some tentative conclusions.

- I saw no posts that were particularly informed by your being a specialist in environmental issues.
- Tech/social media is clearly a dominant theme (4 of 10 posts)
- Your personal life is the primary theme. It clearly includes the 3 that I marked ‘personal observation’ but I think it informs the 2 that are marked ‘advice’ and the 1 on technology.