Full Circle Associates

Liz Lawley blogged on blog research. Elijah Wright responded via email. Liz asked to bring the conversation public and it was back on a blog. Alex Halavais responded (with a blog with comments in a second column with quite a bit of space. I liked that). Elijah and a few others post comments. A reader pleads for more context and then Alex provided a summary with some more context than Liz's original post.

This story exemplified three things to me:

• the complexity of following a conversation in blogspace, both from an attention standpoint and a technical standpoint. Think of the different ways readers might have tapped into the conversation, followed, or gotten lost. Without a rather sophisticated grasp of RSS, trackbacks and the ways things are loosely woven together, most would not follow this. (Tags on to my thesis that it is easy to start blogging from a technical standpoint, but it gets complex quickly.)
  
• the subtle impact of how comments are displayed in my perception of the conversation (Alex's comments-on-same-page give a completely different feel than the comments on Corante M2M). Seeing at least three comment formats in simultaneous play between Liz's, Elijah's and Alex's was very helpful.
  
• the care and passion with which some participate in the conversation. This demonstrates significant connection and reciprocity.

For me this is a really good example of how people move a medium forward, how they evolve a mode of intellectual and personal connectivity, and how embedded it is in practice -- a practice which may remain inaccessible or invisible to others.

I'm not suggesting we dumb down bloggging. Just noting that complex and subtle practices create by nature an exclusion which may or may not be desirable in different settings. Context is QUEEN!

It seems to me like I'm ready for more conversations about these practices of blogging between people. More than the tech talk. I'd love to sit behind some folks who do this and watch how they do it. Ask them what they are thinking. Ah, for a ton of free time!!! Any pointers to people who have done this?