“Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.”
- George E. Woodberry
I had a long conversation with my dear friend Betsy Richter tonight regarding the future of OurPDX, the blog that she founded and that I subsequently took over editorial duties for earlier this year. Alright, I'm lying. The conversation was anything but lengthy, in fact I estimate that it probably took less time to discuss than 95% of the paragraphs that have graced OurPDX in its lifetime so far took to compose. It was all decided in mere minutes. Hibernation is what Betsy decided to call it.
There's this catchphrase that was going around awhile back, doing it wrong, that instantly came to mind. I've always hated catchphrases and that one was certainly no exception. How simplistic and dull is it to make such an explicitly harsh statement as doing it wrong, especially when no one out there is doing it right? Oh sure, there's no shortage of people that claim that they're doing it right while everyone else is doing it wrong but, if you look closer they're mostly full of shit.
Bloggers are a dime a dozen, they're largely disorganized, and nearly none of them are making money - particularly if you eliminate technology blogs from the equation.
My father doesn't read blogs. You could say that he's too old to "get it" and maybe you'd be right but then explain my sister, who is seven years younger than I am and doesn't read blogs either. So then maybe my family isn't the typical target audience for a blog, having little to no interest in the tech industry beyond owning an iPhone. If so, explain my friend Dave in Seattle who works for one of the largest technology companies in the world, Microsoft, and claims he never, ever reads blogs. Who does that leave?
The simple truth is, most people do in fact read blogs on occasion, they just don't realize that what they're reading is a blog.
The problem is this - we're all doing it wrong. I've been doing it completely wrong and to speak honestly, I've probably been doing it a hell of a lot more right than you have. Sure, there are exceptions, but for all of the hype surrounding the blog that we've had to endure over the past several years, I'm just not seeing the mainstream acceptance of it all. Not yet. Not in a way that speaks to people like my father, my sister, or my friend Dave in Seattle.
We're not doing it right and I'm no exception.
But neither are you. Not yet.
