December 15, 2010

What do you think?

Are you finding this blog interesting?

It’s been up and running three weeks – I’d hold out asking until a month, but that will be just about Christmas and I’m sure commenting on a blog will be the last thing on anyone’s mind. What with all the eggnog, Christmas songs and time off.

So the idea is that this blog becomes a conversation about great ideas and where some of those ideas came from. It doesn’t matter what kind of ideas – I’m interested in technology, science and engineering, business and finance, art, music, architecture, writing and plenty of other aspects of creative culture – the key is how the idea developed from a diffuse idea to a real thing.

Or maybe didn’t develop into a real thing – sometimes failure’s the most interesting prism on this stuff. I’m just really interested in this kind of thing. But I also hope that some of the ideas here will prompt flights of inspiration themselves.

So what do you think. Is it doing any of that? What could I do better, differently? Do you have ideas for reviews, interviews, overviews, stories, links?

(Bribe: I have a killer mixtape of Christmas songs for any comments)

Tagged as: blog, books, conversation, creative, ideas, innovation, inspiration, invention, what do you think

  • dailydoseofjess

    @matt_levinson I meant to tweet you on the weekend – it’s very stylish and thoughtful!

  • http://twitoaster.com/country-au/matt_levinson/ matt_levinson

    @dailydoseofjess thanks, Jess. I would love it if you had ideas. On advertising or design or whatever else?

  • Ceri

    Ok Ok, I’ll comment, I just love christmas mixtapes.
    I’m enjoying it very much. A wide range of very interesting topics and pointing me in the direction of books, articles and people I haven’t had the time to find myself or meant to go back to and didn’t, what more could you ask for?
    That said, if you’re not generating the conversations you expected or hoped for, you’re big enough to make the call about continuing the blog. It’s not like you haven’t got anything else to do!

  • http://jimmythemagnet.tumblr.com/ jimmy

    If you’re going to use such short excerpts on your front page I would recommend handcrafting them because your automatic ones, though good intros to the articles, aren’t very click inspiring.

    And your Readings and Do Things need better titles. Trailing themes. Do Things #X: Project Management, kind of things. You will also end up with more search engine friendly URLs. Also some spacing between your list items would look nice.

    I think commenting is going out of style, so add the Sociable plug-in so people can Like and Tweet what they do like.

    Mix-up content styles – long/short/image/text. You’ve got a lot of great ideas, but damn there are not enough hours in the day. The guy that does Daring Fireball has got a good style going – regular short stuff that is quick to put up and maintains interest, then every week or two he drops something long and considered.

    And as I tweeted – thanks for DJ Screw. That’s some good stuff.

  • http://ideas.fortunegrey.com matt

    @ceri thanks a lot, definitely no plans to cut and run – just started! but thought a few weeks in is a good time to think about how it’s developing and whether it’s relevant. mixtape sent!

    @jimmy very useful suggestions. thanks so much for this. will look at putting them into practice over the next few weeks. mixtape sent!

  • http://www.lingo.net.au/blog Susan Kirk

    Comments are a tough part of the blogosphere and I think Jimmi is right commenting is going out of style. Look how twitter has taken off, messages under 140 words. People take the tweet or leave it. There is no expectations for any replies unless a direct question is raised. But it lacks depth and most tweets link to something a bit more substantial. So get them going with a tweet and then link to your blog, regularly. Don’t be shy about promoting yourself. A tip for comments. When I do an interview I leave a couple of questions aside. Once the article is finished and published I ask the final question or questions, then I ask the interviewee to blog the answers. I then say thanks to the comment and offer some further comment. A day or so later I include a further link. BTW anyone with a brain can see this does nothing to contribute to a real conversation it just gives the appearance of one! I think the pyramid style of writing is still relevant for blogs, after all it was developed to be easy to read and short. You’ve got a very niche blog make sure you find your market. Write an article for any of the creative mags ie Desktop promoting your blog. Join the music producers forum etc etc. Post it to the Science Communicators website or mailing list.

    Bribing as you are doing here always works. BTW do not send me a Christmas mixup. I’m off to Vietnam, they don’t do Christmas. Good luck with the blog enjoy it. It takes time it is after all ‘social media’ people have to get to know you. I enjoy mine because it gives me the freedom to write whatever the hell I want. Over and out groovy cat.

  • http://twitter.com/matthewinman Matt Inman

    Have been following this blog with interest – you’ve covered some great topics and look forward to more in 2011. nnMy idea for something you could explore on your blog is the potential for adaption of Kickstarter-style funding model to cover science and R&D. Kickstarter – ‘a new way to fund and follow creativity’ – appears to be very successful…and I wonder if there are R&D examples already funded by Kickstarter; or whether the model of Kickstarter is appropriate to science funding; or whether there are other websites with variations on Kickstarter that are more targetted at supporting science? How might the model work? What would be the investment proposition for supporters? Would be great to get your take on all of this…nnCheersnnMatt

  • http://ideas.fortunegrey.com matt

    @MattInman thanks a lot. It hasn’t been used here for science, but there was a really interesting case with the guys from New Matilda that I’ve been following – I’ll have a look into it and see what they have to say.

    @SusanKirk thanks for the ideas – at the moment this is more about thinking some ideas out loud that I’ve been doing in pieces up until now. So I’m really just trying to get people interacting who can contribute to the thinking process – which could be anyone – but I’m obviously not too worried about setting the publishing world on fire (just yet).

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