Goal clash

I've said time and time again that what I am doing with this thesis is all about why museums should blog, because so much has been written about how museums should blog.

Yet it just kills me when I see museums blogging who I feel could improve their interestingness factor by many times if they just changed this, or that, or did this other thing. It's so hard not to want to delve into "How I Think Your Museum Should Blog." Actually, it's less difficult in writing than it is when I'm reading my SURVEY *cough* responses. And anything I say is inherently biased. But at this point, I'm a pretty experience blog reader. (I'm tracking 132 feeds: 49 knitting blogs (yes knitting blogs! Because yarn is like crack, and so is lace and fair isle and, oh my), 44 museum blogs, 25 museum related blogs, and various other blogs from all areas. Not to mention the 50 livejournal friends blogs I keep up with and the 30 livejournal community blogs I read, plus a half dozen people who only blog at myspace) I'm no Robert Scoble, following over 550 feeds that update way more frequently than most of mine do, but I have a pretty good idea what's up and what's going down.

So it's hard to resist that siren song of best practices. Maybe as an appendix. Maybe I just need to link to that 95 Theses (Doc Searles, not Martin Luther). We'll see. It's tempting to try and work it into my proposal for Rethinking Museums (which is becoming so big! It's just amazingly exciting, what's happening there.)

While I wrestle with my pedantic demons, I need to work out my public relations section. I'm realizing increasingly that it's false to separate communication, education, and PR in the way I'm doing it, but it seems so necessary if I'm to maintain some semblance of order. I have a full committee meeting set for early April, so I should be able to get some feedback on it then.

Hmmm.... I've got an idea percolating in mah brain. (MAH BRAIN HURTS! It'll have to come out!!) Would anyone like to be on my cyber-committee? Take a look at my draft bits, give me some feedback? I'm not quite confident enough to post my raw writing to the blog, still a bit too possessive of my ideas, afraid they're going to get stoled or bashed between two heavy bricks (Have you sussed this paragraph's theme yet? Two points for you!).

Before I devolve too far into the "cry for help, this thesis thing is hard" I wanted to make sure you all saw Nina's very cool post on museum blogs. She breaks down museum blog approaches in an understandable manner. Nina, I think you've just earned a bibliographic citation in my thesis! I can see using your break down in my spreadsheet of blogs and/or in my introduction to/explanation of blogs.