Happy Birthday! Cakes

Cakes is 5 years old today! Over those 5 years, it has developed a lot, and I think it is worth taking a closer look at that experience and to ask what new bloggers could learn from it?

Early on, Cakes was just a way for the Learning Technology Development team to share bookmarks. Although now I might use a social bookmarking tool like Delicious to share links, it was worth starting off just doing something simple that gave us the chance to explore the process of blogging. It also gave us an understanding of the blogging software and surrounding technologies like web feeds.

It was only after a few months that we really started adding value in what we were doing. There are many, many blogs that just link to things, but when we started writing up our own knowledge and opinions we began to find what it made sense for our voice to be in the external conversation around elearning. We started becoming more outward looking too.

My advice to new bloggers would be just to start writing about things that interest you. Over time you usually need to develop some sort of focus and identity if you want people to read your work and subscribe to it. However if you need time to find out what this identity is, just find time to write about and properly explore the topic you are interested in. For me this has been a very important activity in my own learning about learning and about technology.


[Image by ĻiĻ Pië]


This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.