Ensight – Jeremy Wright

I’m so looking forward to this trip. I have 3 of 4 sessions ready, passport all done and I’m just about ready to think about prepping to start packing, heh.

It’s a long trip (almost 18 hours), but I’m very much looking forward to meeting everyone and chatting with Romania bloggers, business people and marketers about what blogging means for them (ie: I’m not going there with all the answers, mainly to fuel discussion).

Back on the 6th, in case I don’t blog while in Romania!

Just a quick note that I’ve been on a handful of podcasts these last few weeks. I’m sure I’ve forgotten some (sorry!), but here are the ones I remember:

Tyme / Wright podcast
G’Day World
Community Admin Show

Ta

Just a note that over the next 3-4 weeks I am going to be crazy busy. I mean, I’m always busy, but these next few weeks will take it to a new level. The “busy” period could extend for 6 weeks.

I’ll still try and blog, but if I seem unusually rushed, distant, unresponsive, unable to get to everything I’d normally want to get to, etc… It’s because I am.

Romania from the 30-6th. Then back and straight into a big project for 2 weeks. Then probably into another. Then probably a round-the-world whirlwind trip (itinerary isn’t set at this point, more on that later).

So yeah, crazy busy.

18 months ago today, I decided to take control of my “blogging addiction”. Partly I was spending way too much time reading feeds. Partly I was spending too much time focussing on talking about stuff instead of doing it. And partly I was just getting sick of the, erm, mutual massaging that blogging can sometimes become.

It’s been a bit of a journey, but one of the key things I’ve been able to measure is my feed subscriptions. When I started this prcess, I read 800 feeds. Craziness. When I realized this had become an issue, I went through and culled feeds I just skimmed over, feeds that were inactive, feeds I hated seeing everyday, etc.

I still had 500 or so.

Every 3-4 months since then, I’ve done the same exercise. And while I keep adding 3-5 feeds a week to my reading, the number just keeps going down. 400. 300. 200. 150.

Today, it went under 100. In fact, I now only read 75 feeds. This time, I cut down primarily in 3 areas: b5 blogs (I was subscribed to about 20, even ones I didn’t like… but the network is so big now that it’s hard to keep track of everything, so now I’m subscribed to the ones I like), business / VC blogs (when we were going after funding this was critical, now it isn’t so important) and plain old dead blogs or blogs I didn’t like.

So yeah, down to 75. It’s nice.

Obviously my blogging levels have dropped in recent months. And while it’s painful to see, I also think it’s healthy. As I transition into being more of “b5media’s CEO” I’m sure I’ll start blogging about the industry more, but for now, when I’m juggling a few things and just trying to keep up with all the balls in the air, focussing on “doing” instead of “talking” is critically important.

Finally, I really did get sick of the circle-jerk that blogging can sometimes be. While I love talking with the industry and “web 2.0″ as much as the next guy, I honestly feel that face-time is way, way better for that, and that constantly blogging about it means that most folk miss the message because of the medium.

Plus, nothing gets decided from a blog post. Everything is done via direct contact anyways.

I’m sure I haven’t really struck a true healthy balance yet. But I’m glad to see that I’m no longer addicted to blogging (medium, message and platform)