Blabbing About Blogging for Reclaim Hosting’s “On Writing”

What could be more traditional than the time honored blogging about blogging? Oh, oh, oh, Mr. Kotter call in me! What about blabbing live online about blogging?

That’s the beauty oh what is just a part of Reclaim Hosting’s Blogging Community of Practice, notably the “On Writing” series on Reclaim.tv that Jim Groom et al been up to this year… and suitably blogged by the bava himself. I’ve relished listening to the series of folks, and peppering comments in the Discord channel, listening to people I’ve knowm through the blog spaces and their extensions for, well a bleep long time.

I’m a BIG FAN, Jim!

I knew eventually he might come knocking at the dog door, so we arranged a date in late August. I was not surprised, nor even disappointed when I heard from Maren Deepwell that she should would be filling in for Jim for my slot on the show. I understand that Jim was just a bit…. intimidated by The Cog Dog, so he sent in Maren (if you do not know Jim, you have to understand giving him ***** is his love language, no Jim was actually traveling) (I will cling to that story).

I thought these were live, but apparently some are pre-recorded, so we met in late July for my time to blab about blogging, which was webcast on August 29.

Yes, I did specifically choose to wear my HTML/ACDC tshirt, the original worn out one which has been re-issued from the dog wear store… hey, imagine that, there is a blog post!

And of course the memory is now fuzzy, but I will rely on it. The typical back story leading as well to present role at Open Education Global.

Maren started with a question about the blogging elements planned for the November 2025 Reclaim Open conference and its theme of Rewilding the Network. Surely you have registered and I think there is a window left for submitting a proposal, all typical Reclaim Hosting style that is refreshingly innovative. Come on, when you submit a proposal, you get to chose a unique animated GIF for it.

We talked about the idea of the Blog-a-thon format.

There was some blabbing about the practice of blog commenting, including my long time to make meeting of the mysterious Lachance, the comment blogger, which ironically and web serendipitously happened as an outcome of my listening to the On Writing session with Kathleen Fitzpatrick.

Much blabbing was made about RSS, how foundational it was to the syndication bus of DS106

This experience of creating these hub sites in WordPress spun out to much of my freelance work 2011-2016 on helping folks get through Feed WordPress 101, including the DML Research Hub’s Connected Courses (the web site which for some strange reason is still alive). That was so unhinged, they let me, Jim, and Howard Rheingold run with a BlogTalk live show as a parody of CarTalk.

Building Connected Courses: Feed WordPress 101

The blabbing got loud when I staked my claim (still true) that RSS is The Indispensable Digital Research Tool I can Say, Without Lying, Saves Time. I still am deeply horrified how many smart educators and tech heads do not make use of a Feed Reader. Or that lame excuse people make they gave up on RSS when Google killed Reader. I had been there with google from love to post mortem whilst I packed up my feeds and continued feed reading with no loss or damage from Digg Reader to Feedly to where I remain now, Inoreader. Don’t even get my fur up about those weirdos who claimed Twitter was a Feed Reader replacement.

The power of a reader is not only being able to scan in one screen a wide swath of information from difference sources, not just blogs but news, weather, email newsletters, Mastodon, BUT that you can group feeds into sensible topics as folders. This way you can see what’s new across a wide range of sources, my primary one is a folder called Top Shelf (all blogs!)

Easy to see what’s new if the title is bold, and you can click, or better yet, use the “j” and “k” keys to read the posts right in this interface. I can read what’s new from 68 blogs, without even having to visit them (only if I want to comment).

But there’s much more with a collection of feeds, you can easily share them on one file, a playlist of web sites, known as the ever cryptic OPML. Inoreader has a nifty feature, where the OPML for say this folder can be shared by a link (that way I do not have to update it). Here is my Top Shelf collection of feeds.

This means if any body wanted, they could import the whole collecting in one click to their own reader, then decided to keep or discard the feeds. I blabbed to Maren about the case I tried to make that this was maybe a more useful approachj for learners to do then me building them a syndication hub site (that’s giving them the fish) vs teaching them how to set up a feed reader and import an OPML file of all class bloggers.

This was my 952th big idea that never caught on.

Keep Blog Syndication Simple[r]

I have been working that with Open Education Global as part of the podcast I do there- I have been collecting feeds for podcasts related to open education (13 so far, I know there’s more) that I have set up to be shared as a viewer of what episodes are new, but also making the subscriptions available as an OPML file.

Open Education Podcast Collection

I blabbed / suggested to Maren that maybe the should to this for Reclaim Open, create a shared reader file of all participants blogs.

Well I am sure there was more blabbing on blogging in that conversation, but this post has rambled on, and my dog needs a walk.

I much appreciated chatting with Maren, and we had as expected, on screen appearances of dogs, and for me, a black cat too.

So if you are an old blabbing blogger or new, I urge you to get part of Reclaim Hosting’s Blogging Community of Practice. It’s where all the cool bloggers are. Plus Jim Groom is there. Sometimes 😉

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Featured Image: A frame from my appearance blabbing on the On Writing show atop a screenshot of my archive for blog posts about blogging.