Jeffrey C. Long

Read this today on the Strange Attractor blog today.

Opening keynote was from Tim Bray of Sun Microsystems, who provided a very good introduction to blogging. He gave beginners a good overview of the sorts of things you need to think about when you start blogging, and more experience people got a reminder of the things that should be important to them. One particularly good point was:

Private blogs aren’t private, and the internet never forgets – something you write today will be dredged up in a very embarrassing scenario in 2028.

I have to agree wholeheartedly with this. I’ve been bitten on the bum by something I’d written in a fit of frustration six months beforehand, so I’ve learnt my lesson, but it’s one that is going to become more important as more people put more personal information online.

Important idea for myself and my blogging friends. Lately I’ve been discriminating between my personal journal, emails, my blog and my preaching. For years my emails have been a sort of monological/dialogical journal. My blog became a more public version. But due to my reading of Nancy Nordenson’s blog, I came to the conclusion that journaling was an important habit for collecting one’s thoughts. It’s been a good habit, so I now have concentric circles of expression. And the reminder that “the internet never forgets.”