Blogging as Life Recording
In interviews, we're often asked about the inspiration for Vox. Was there a specific moment that made Six Apart want to develop a service that focused on small group communication? The answer is yes and the anecdote that usually is told is the "Banjo story," which I've written about here over two years ago (it takes a long time to get a product out!).
Vox is about personal blogging and about quality of audience, not quantity. Life recording is also a phrase that we use to describe the power of using blogging to document the little and big details in our lives.
The video in this post is my speech at TED, a yearly conference that focuses on technology, entertainment and design (hence, the TED moniker). In this video, I tell the banjo story and offer some reasons why I think blogging is important -- as well as some examples of blogs and bloggers who have made a difference to me.
As a Voxer, you'll probably recognize a lot of the experiences I speak about, namely the ability to go back into your archives and remember just how you felt when you took a photo or wrote a post. The power to a capture a moment (be it large like the birth of a child or small like a really good dinner) is something we want to give as many people as possible.
Anyway, this is a long way of saying "here's a video of me talking about why blogging is important to me."
Comments
Thanks for posting this, it was really good. It's funny, I was just watching your presentation with your mom at DEMO, and while the execution was a little "less polished", your genuinity and passion for blogging really come out in both.
On-topic: I call my main website a "journal" instead of a "blog" precisely because I view it as a means to track life events that my feeble memory would otherwise easily, permanently lose.
I LIKE MENA, SHE'S COOL!
Inspiring.
Thank for the great service and leadership.
I also just want to thank you, as I've never been able to really do that. Thank you for, well, all this. I am appreciative of it.
I'm going to stop being creepy in the Team's comments, now. I just really wanted to say thank you.
This is very inspiring. I mean, I've been blogging for over a year now and usually I write about personal stuff in my life (of course, some really personal stuff that I would only want my friends to read are filtered)...but that's partly the reason why I blog. It's to keep record of what I have done, even though it's not daily. The other reason is to connect to other people.
Thank you for a great post/video!
Awesome speech! I remember when you were talking about developing Vox. I'm so stoked I can finally play with it. This is exactly what blogging software should be. You've made something I enjoy using and find it the easiest to use to share all the things I have always wanted to share.
Thank you for a great product!
Nervous much, Mena? : ) Your enthusiasm makes up for it. It's referring to hear something about blogging other than as mass-media-alternative or emo-kid-whining.
That was really great.
I work in a school where the administration thinks that blogs are really really dangerous and the only people reading them are predators. I'd like to anonymously send a link to your presentation to them so they can see some valid reasons why students might want to keep a blog.