Sad lego. From Kalexanderson on Flickr.
If you could take a vote to determine the worst types of blog posts, the listicle-without-content would probably show up pretty high. (Yes, numbering is narrative, but if you’re tapping into our reflex to look at anything that’s been put into a numbered list, you’d better deliver X quantity of terrific insights.)
But I’d venture to say that the very worst genre of post is the apology post – a.k.a. any post that begins “Sorry I haven’t written in so long.” The apology presupposes that your community of readers have been waiting with bated breath for your next contribution to the world, checking back every few days in anticipation before clicking away, despondent.
That state of affairs is highly unlikely to be accurate. Typically, the biggest loser when you don’t post is you.
And so it is with the Argo blog. This has been a terrific outlet to trade thoughts with the Argo collective and those outside it, and I regret not making the time to write more often as the project kicked into high gear. There are many clear lessons from our year-and-change of blogging, and there are just as many interesting findings that haven’t yet shifted from information to knowledge. As the all-too-quick pilot phase of Argo gives way to the perpetual next phase of building on what we’ve learned, I hope we can start to capture and share as much as we possibly can.
Soon, we’ll be issuing an open-source release of the tools we’ve built for the Argo bloggers, as well as collecting some of the lessons, philosophies and best practices we’ve developed along the way. In the meantime, you’ll probably see some life in the Argo blog as we start pulling together material for the release. Thanks for tuning in.
