The problem with bloggers

The problem with bloggers is that we aren’t educated in the English language, we are socially unsophisticated, use bad language without compunction, don’t know what fork to use at a fancy dinner, we don’t know how to do proper interviews, we can get far too shrill without the measured tones of the staid establishment, we don’t get paid to do what we do, we recklessly swing our megaphones from the perspective of passion. We are also far too close to the topic at hand to have any real perspective on the issue. Hrumph.

When bloggers are upsetting the press in an area such as politics, my reaction is “who cares?” The political press is self-absorbed, and look at themselves as newsmakers rather than news reporters.

But now I’m very unintentionally brought into this issue in the area of CAD reporting. Some of the “real” press realizes that the conventional establishment is going to need to come to grips with how to deal with non-establishment. We are uncouth, don’t spell check before posting, do not know how to use a semi-colon, but people are reading our stuff anyway. In fact, our stuff is creating much more of a stir than any of the conventional press stuff because of our biggest foibles: we have opinions and actually use the technology we write about.

This week I’ve had some great conversations with press folks who at least understand the role of blogger, and some conversations that ended awkwardly as soon as I mentioned I was a blogger. Bloggers were included by SolidWorks with the rest of the press in the press events this week. Bloggers were easy to spot at any press gathering, we were the loud ones huddled together in a corner, shouting expletives and drinking too much beer. We were not inquiring as to the character or vintage of the cabernet.

“The Press” as a word is a bit of a misnomer. Not all of the people wrote for print magazines or online magazines. Analysts were also included with “The Press”. We had at least one financial rather than CAD industry analyst. Analysts tend to write reports for paying private clients rather than for advertised public consumption. Questions from these folks had a tendency more to the declarative than iterrogatory. They were always incomprehensible multi-part questions that I couldn’t even imagine who would find the answer even vaguely useful. Indeed, the typical answers to these questions were equally vague and evasive so that the entire exchange looked like an absurd battle of wits rather than Q and A. I’m sure this analysis of the situation only shows my ignorance and lack of sophistication.

Anyway, this was an eye opening experience for me. I’ve made some new friends and learned a lot about an industry that doesn’t pay my salary, yet I am still somehow caught up in it.

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Update:

Rachael Dalton-Taggart has tagged on to this story, and given a similar perspective from the other side of the fence.Roopinder Tara also chimed in on the topic.