Another day with talks, thoughts, discussions, today at the World Blogging Forum Vienna.
These are a few very personal, not too well structured notes – written as long as the thoughts are fresh. They are neither complete nor do they try to reflect what happened.

# There is no such thing as a blog or the blog. It has become really hard to find some common areas – just because a bunch of people are using similar tools to work. Are there typewriter-typers or telephone-talkers conferences?

# Media are here for entertainment. More laughs create less questions. This is quite an interesting ratio: the panels where the audience complained about boring talks produced a lively discussion. But the more positive the twitterwall was, the less “oral” feedback came from the audience. Explanation 1: We bloggers have a short attention span between late breakfast and early vodka (no offence…). Explanation 2: We love to hate stuff – it just feels much more like being alive.

# Enterprises are frequently told to listen when they are considering using social media. Listening with the ears and not with an RSS reader or alert tool is not one of our strengths. Too many words – in writing and in talking; that’s a very common bloggers disease.

# The monetization issue, again and again. If you want to make money, you have to work. If you want to make more money, you have to wpork on something that people need/want/like.
I don’t see a point in discussing how to make money with blogs. I don’t see blogs as media or mediahouses, but as working tools. And besides that: I don’t think that is much mor fun to work for Huffington Post than to work for Kronen Zeitung, Falter, News or Standard. I’ve worked for the latter three and some more – and it’s the same stuff all over in different colors and slightly different levels of alphabetisation. You have to deliver something that can be sold, you have to meet the audiences expectations. With my blog, I don’t care.
Wine-Blogger Vaynerchuck has been mentioned as a successul examploe – to me, is less in the blogging business and rather in a drug business.

# “You’re boring” is the new “I don’t get this right now”. There may have been a time when you asked people what they actually meant. But it’s easier to switch to a different topic.

# I can’t get really excited about open data. Data are just data. Sarrazin has lots of data – and it worked; many not obviously stupid people where seriously interested in his bullshit.

# It’s much harder to be pro something than being against something. Enemies produce a great background – for heroes, jokes, dreams. Hollywood is working with that, too.

# There are some celebrities and politicians on Twitter, yes. I don’t read Bunte or Gala either. And I hate it when spokespeople of political parties mess around in my timeline or on my wall. Ok, sometimes it’s funny. Ridiculous. Annoying?
And it’s always a matter of where you are: even @luefkens, Chief Social Something of Word Economic Forum Davos has been accused of practicing northcorean information strategies.

# Did we actually cover the future of blogging? – Why should we? I have to get back to my first post I wrote for the WBF-Blog: I don’t care about it. I’m working on it.
There was a very short discussion on free information and free infrastructure brought up by Johannes Grenzfurthner. But it ended fast with the true and trivial statement that freedom alone would not have financed this event.

# I met some thoughtful people, some friends and some bullshitters.

What did I take away?

• I don’t know if I’m a blogger (with a capital B). Actually I’m rather an SUV-driving white male pitbull-owner. But in order to get a clearer view on things I started to write them down a few years ago.
• I don’t drive an SUV for fun. I need it to haul trailers. I don’t write for fun only in the meantime. It helps me tracking issues I’m really interested in. These issues mainly deal with understanding, with terms and terminologies, sometimes with media.
• I don’t want to stick to any rules in my blog. I don’t care about structure, about tangibility. If there’s something coming back – great. If not – that’s great, too. I consider blogging as playing around in a laboratory. I’m still curious where it takes me.
• On the other hand, I care a lot about form, function and meaning. But I care less about doing things right but rather about directly experiencing problems. I don’t try to make things beautiful, I try to understand them. That’s somehow the core of the blogging discussions I’ve had in the past years…

But as I’m still sitting here and thinking, it must have been a good day. Thanks to datadirt and werquer for making this happen.

Michael Hafner

schreibt hier zu digitalen Medien, Verlagsmodellen und Enterprise 2.0 und arbeitet an “Informavores”, der Erzählung zur großen Wirtschafts- und Politikkrise.