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i guess i'll toss in a few more cents to the discussion of aiesec
blogs.
lately... i've been questioning my own use of an 'aiesec' blog
when that space/usage could go to an active member or a
trainee. it started while discussing the weblog problem with
kai and the shortlived weblog guru helper team thingy...
it's the balance of guilt about doing something 'nice' for aiesec
vs. enjoying something good for me. a free weblog that's
easily configured and offers a lot of freedom in that
configuration?.. gotta love it. however, how many of us have
sacrificed how much for the good of aiesec's mission?
often when there's a need, the market or situation finds a
solution or a balance. there's a lot of free weblog hosting
companies out there... and others which offer services for $
too.
however, for alumni, moving to an external service means leaving
the aiesec community. The central nature of the aiesec
weblogs makes finding the current lives and experiences of
aiesec'rs (alumni, trainees and members) a relatively easy
task. Scattering these people to the web makes the task
complicated and tedious.
in the true meaning of the idea that no good deed goes
unpunished, the huge growth of the aiesec weblogs has made managing
those weblogs a daunting task. just
look at what happened over at weblogs.com and read lawmeme's take on
it. i'd hate to see that happen to the aiesec weblog
system. a 95% uptime quirky weblog system is far better than
0% uptime... if it's free.
i can see a few options that would help maintain the
balance.
- maintain
status quo -- limit creation of new weblogs to trainees and
active US members along with the culling of inactive weblogs.
- maintain
status quo, but add a weblog which monitors the RSS feeds of
external weblogs belonging to aiesec affiliated members or alumni
-- creating a list of most recently updated weblogs and hopefully
a list of all weblogs affiliated.
- as alumni leave, they can band together in a webring.
adding a small amount of html to their weblog when possible.
however, many weblog services don't allow this or links to blogs
external to their system.
- a few alumni can band together, donate some money and create
their own alumni weblog system, charging for the service or
requiring donations. hopefully able to get the use of
aiesec's name.
- some money would appear from somewhere, (donations, @MCs, etc)
and the current system could be updated/upgraded.
The twist of the matter is that the problem facing the aiesec
weblog community will get worse as the community ages. Current
members will someday end their active career, Trainees will go
home. A solution to maintain the integrity of the weblog
system and the community being built needs to be found soon.
Otherwise as the next generation of bloggers turns over they'll
leave (by choice or by necessity) and the community will suffer the
same turnover and continuity problems as aiesec as a whole.
until a decision is made, i'll continue researching weblogs for
something that'll work with my free hosting and allow me the same
kind of freedom to customize and adapt as i see fit. (i'll
need something which isn't running on a main server, but published
from my desktop...) (and while i'm at it... it'd be nice if it had
some kind of plug-in to Outlook/NewsGator and waaay cool if there
was some way to get entries to be noted on my calendar, and contain
a link to my local pictures archive where appropriate...) (oooh and
before i go... i want the full backup of my weblog... the
archive, etc, preferrable with all the metadata
too...)
Posted by BG on 6/19/04; 9:48:34 PM
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