Hello? Anyone Listening?

First let me say that Educon 2.1 was amazing. The conversation was deep from the time I left Rochester on Friday to the time I dropped Brian Smith in his driveway. My philosophy and values of education were pushed and challenged. Big time.

One interesting conversation took place in Bud Hunt's session about writing. On top of his statement that "Hyperlinks are adjectives (and the subsequent blog post) and some individual time to reflect on writing came a debate about audience. It seems that I am not the only one who is wrestling with who I'm blogging for. There were some in the crowd that were writing for themselves, some who were vaguely aware of who they are writing for, and some who knew exactly who they were writing for.

It may be a generalization, but it seemed that it might have been the newer bloggers that were most unsure of who they were writing for (or simply writing for themselves). I feel that I am in this group. First off, it seems that next to no one is reading my posts, so in that sense I am writing for myself. So you may say, "Why not just get out your journal ?" My response: good question. Maybe it's that I hope someone stumbles onto my blog and connects with something I am saying. Maybe it's just that the blog is an easy place for me to write. I am not quite sure. It's not that I want to keep my writing private as much as it's a lack of readers I suppose.

I think knowing your audience matters. The problem is when I sit down to post, the cage match usually begins (thus leading to many unfinished drafts). If you could take a look into my head you'd see many of the people in my reader in the red corner and in the blue corner you'd see the teachers in my building and district. Herein lies the problem: Who do I want to write for? Am I looking to share with the big picture crew (like many of the exceptional people I met at Educon) or the teachers I work with who could care less about big picture ideas, but would like to know what to do on a wiki?

Is it selfish of me to simply write for myself, sometimes taking on heady issues and sometimes sharing more concrete ideas and say "take from it what you can," to my reader? Or is it more important that I 'pick' my audience and consistently write with them in mind? I'm thinking that it may be more of the former than the latter.