Make it Conversational

Hello, everyone. You may have noticed I've posted here a couple of times recently. (You might not have.) I'm hoping to help get you guys going a little bit, maybe turn this thing into the masterpiece of inquisitive conversation and learning I know it could be. Let me suggest the following uses for a blog like this:

• Reviews: of books, films, papers, poems, events, or anything else you noticed and would like to recommend to the world (and specifically to the Etc group).


• Queries: questions you have about ideas, authors, whatever.


• Idea Formation: if you have ideas you're fleshing out, present them to the group and see if they can help you with the thinking process. There's a great example of this kind of collaboration at Chris Anderson's Long Tail blog, where he's working out ideas for a book he's writing. (Anderson edits Wired, a great contemporary magazine, by the way.)


• Research Round Ups: share your research into ideas, topics, authors, whatever. Got a bunch of great links to Ezra Pound sites? Throw 'em up here. Give us an annotated tour.


• Recommendations: even if you don't have time to do a review, you can throw up a quick recommendation of a book, a film, an author, an article. You get the idea.


• Super Cool Links: Got a great site? Link it.


• Commenting! Give back the love, or this won't be fun for anyone. Comment in the comments, comment in new posts. But make sure this thing is conversational.

The other thing you should make sure to do with this blog: be professional. Not only because you're creating a public persona, not only because it would be nice for you to look good should anyone (a cool peer, a current prof, Stan Fish) stop by, not only because professionalism helps you preserve and cultivate professional relationships, but also because professionalism helps make discourse interesting, insightful, accessible, and enjoyable. So keep it high-minded, keep it clean, keep it courteous, keep it polite, keep it interesting, keep it competent. If someone needs to be banned from posting, that conversation should take place offline. Ditto if you've been offended by something, in most cases: keep flame wars and conflict resolutions and insults in general in the face to face real world.

Comments? Conversations?