Full Circle Associates

I'm stepping into a bit of a new world today as I join the new Corante Web Hub as a contributor. First, about the hub:

"The Corante Web Hub is your starting point for keeping abreast of the best writing and thinking on the forces and factors impacting the Web and where it's headed. Here you'll find the field's most insightful observers and commentators tracking and reporting on its latest developments as well as weighing in on its future. For a full description of the Web Hub and the Corante Network in general, visit this page.

Click here for a full list of the Web Hub contributors. We encourage you to provide ideas and suggestions as we work to make this hub and the extended network ever more useful - email us at hubfeedback@gmail.com.

Basically, Corante is aggregating the post of a group of bloggers for the Web Hub, and is launching two others today as well, the Marketing Hub (which I notice is much more visual plus, ironically, I know more of the contributors!) and the Media Hub. Clearly I've been out of the media mainstream for too long (did you know I worked in broadcasting for 8 years?) to know the folks in that hub!

The Web Hub contributors are:

• Danny Ayers
  
• Alex Barnett
  
• Stowe Boyd (who I run into at conferences!)
  
• Pete Cashmore
  
• Emily Chang
  
• Corante Group Blog
  
• Bud Gibson (a guy I associate with a "community" centric view - yes!
  
• Robin Good (whom I know and really enjoy his contributions to the world)
  
• Otis Gospodnetic
  
• Matt Hurst
  
• Marshall Kirkpatrick (just started reading, and enjoying, Marshall!)
  
• Matt McAlister
  
• Jim McGee (My first "blog buddy" who helped me with RadioUserland - what, 4 years ago?)
  
• Randy Morin
  
• Peter O'Kelly
  
• Oliver Thylmann
  
• John Tropea
  
• Jack Vinson (a fellow knowledg-sharing sort of guy - yes!)
  
• Nancy White
  
• Ken Yarmosh (who is also the hub editor)
  
• Improbulus
  
• Mary Hodder (Yeah, Bloghers!)
  
• Howard Rheingold and smartmob team (Howard was my first online community "teacher!")

My Reflections
I have to say, this is a bit weird for me. I realized that I'm not sure how my writing and work fits into some worlds, including the "web" hub at Corante. It has been an interesting moment of introspection to think of how the "squishy" work I do around online interaction fits into the more tech-oriented "web" domain. I see some of my network of buddies in the contributor list, which reassures me. (Hm, in fact, it would be very interesting to map the connections of the contributors, something like this that Jack Vinson pointed out earlier today.)

Although we are many separate bloggers, just going about our "normal" daily blogging (that in itself is a funny thought - what the heck is normal?), the hub has provided a mechanism for us to be aware of what others are posting in their blogs in a new way. We are affilliated in a way. I'm realizing that some of us often point to similar things. What does that mean? I'm not sure. Will I be more concious of not duplicating? Will multiple posts about the same thing help us see new patterns?

If I stay concious of the affiliation, it probably will impact my blogging. I'm going to try and pay attention and see what happens.

This is the bottom line question for me, my learning opportunity: what are the impacts of our interconnectedness? The hub offers me, as a blogger, a new set of connections. It offers readers a set as well, should they choose to "read" us as a group.

What will it mean to you?

All in all, I'm happy to be part of this new endeavor and experiment. Nothing better than stepping off a new cliff to see if our wings work!

Categories: blog, Corante, WebHub, connection,