Epiblogger has been open for little over a week and I have already screwed up. I just got a little bit too excited and I got ahead of myself. I started talking about writing and I didn’t even introduce myself. It was rude and I am sorry. Let me take a step back and try this again.
Welcome to Epiblogger and welcome to 2008. My name is Rhett Soveran. That’s me in the picture this past Christmas with my sister’s dog, Flame (who is a 50 pound lap dog). I am 25 years old, live in Calgary, Alberta (Canada) and I am married. By day I work for a newswire service called Marketwire as a Senior Editor and Trainer. In 2006, I completed my Bachelor’s degree in English and I am a writer and poet. This past summer I had the opportunity to read some of my work at a music festival near Calgary. It was the first time I truly considered myself a rockstarpoet, which also happens to be the name of my personal blog. I have been blogging at rockstarpoet for almost two years, but I have been on the net for a lot longer. My true entrance onto the internet was when I signed up for my first Hotmail account and they had just reached their millionth user. Now you know a little bit about me and there is a reason I think it’s important that you do.
There is a lot of talk about being an authority in your blogging niche. I would like to change that jargon. I believe it is more important to be a leader. You might think I am splitting hairs, but hear me out. There are a lot things that make a great leader, but there are two things that are the most important to me: (1) the ability to know when to lead and to know when to be lead and (2) to take the time to see where change needs to be made and to endeavour to make those changes. I don’t want to be an authority on blogging or writing, but I do want to be a leader. I recognize that there have been and are leaders who I need to continue to learn from, but also recognize that I have ideas that I want to share and want to make improvements where I see deficits.
One of my ideas is that I want to bring a renewal to the sense of community and conversation in blogging and that is why I introduce myself. It seems to me that there are too many blogs that are abusing their community for the sake of profits. Let me be honest, I would love to blog for a living. I would love if at some point this blog enabled that, but I won’t allow that desire to come before community, conversation and friendship. There are too many blogs that build a community superficially for the sake of making money. I want to start Epiblogger on the right foot. Or the left foot. Actually, I want to start Epiblogger with both feet planted firmly in the commitment to converse and not lecture, to be a leader and not an authority and to be open and organic to the changes in myself and to the bloggers around me.
Now that we are firmly rooted in an ongoing conversation let’s move forward.
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4 Comments
Congratulations on your new blog! I agree, it is all about the conversations and the people. After all, money can’t buy friendship! (not for long anyway)
anit: Thank you! I most certainly agree that money can’t buy friendship and I think there are great examples of community blogs, but more often than not they tend to seem shallow. I love your domain name, by the way. It’s brilliant. I think I have a few anti-grammar posts in mind for the future.
Fantastic post. It’s all about the community and the bonds formed between each member. I like your blog. I’m going to be a regular visitor
Thanks Brown. I look forward to discussing blogging and all sorts of stuff here and on your blog and anywhere else we might meet.
2 Trackbacks
[...] Rhett was right, where are our manners. How rude of us to just jump right in and start posting and not give you some background about us. I think we were both just so excited about Epiblogger opening its doors that we just forgot our manners. Let me try this again. [...]
[...] not. Try to leave your blog posts open at the end to encourage people to leave their thoughts. If blogging is about conversation then the door needs to be left open for readers to have their [...]