OK, so the recent changes I made to the portfolio section of this site got me thinking about all the other things that were wrong, and how I needed, and more importantly wanted, to have a bit more of a vehicle for contributing to the dialogue on design on the internet. I’m a big consumer of ideas, opinions and factoids on the net, but am most often a “lurker” rather than a contributor. The idea of being a lurker has a pretty negative connotation in most areas of human interaction, but on the net, in the sense I’m talking about, it tends to mean somebody who reads, but doesn’t contribute. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing – if you read many of the comment threads on the larger news sites, there are many individuals “contributing” that might be better advised to lurk. Let’s just say I’d rather be called a lurker than a troll.
For a while now, I’ve had a “news” section on this site, which has traditionally on this and other similar sites been used mainly in a self-promotional way (“look at the great project we just finished!”). Lately, I’ve been using the “news” section as an occasional space to post things that might be a bit more blog-like, and with this latest incarnation of the site, I’d like to expand that some more, thus the introduction of “intublog” and “found around the web”. I’m going to aim for a weekly post on both of these, occasionally it might be more frequent, and probably often it might be a bit less, when project demands are really intense. The blog will still talk about recent projects, but will also include some more thoughtful, and hopefully thought-provoking takes on design for public spaces and design practice. The “found around the web” section is meant to be items likely to be of interest to visitors to this site. They will typically be a sentence or two of explanation or a teaser quote, along with a link to the source for more info. In this way, Dear Reader, you may benefit from the hours of research (aka: time wasting) I put in every week, reading dozens of blogs and news sites.
Now for all this to work really well, I need something from you – feedback. Tell me what you’d like to hear about, what you liked, what you didn’t like, and tell me most of all if you think I’m just plain wrong. As you will notice, I haven’t implemented commenting here yet, but you can share your thoughts with me Commenting now available!
