Blogger of the Month: April DeConick

It's been mentioned a lot elsewhere, but it's worth mentioning again here:

Biblioblogs: Blogger of the Month for August 2007

A particular highlight, I thought, was this expression of how she sees the blogging enterprise:

I have set some parameters in place for my posts. I do not consider what I write on my blog to be publishable or even ideas to publish in a traditional format. So I am not writing what I would consider “academic” writing. I am also not writing a personal diary of the life and times of April DeConick.

What I do on my blog is more like professional journalism — op. ed. news and reviews in my field. Much of my material comes from issues that arise during the day — responding to something I’ve read or something that came up in a class I’ve just taught or a comment a reader has left.

When I write a blog post, I do it as a teacher. I understand my blog to be a virtual space for education to happen, a space whose only physical boundary is the computer scene. When I write a post, I usually envision it as an extended university classroom or conference seminar whose audience includes interested and conversant people, students and colleagues.

Well, April's blog has already educated me a lot and I look forward to more of the same.

Biblical Studies Blog Carnival Latest

I was away when this was published, but I always like to mention the Biblical Studies Blog Carnivals, not least because the authors put so much hard work into doing them. This month Stephen Cook has done a great job over at Biblische Ausbildung:

Biblical Studies Carnival XIX

Thanks, Stephen; and thanks, Tyler, for organising these.

I should also mention that the Biblioblogger of the month for July 2007 is Claude Mariottini.

"All-you-can-eat blog buffet"

That's a nice phrase from the interview with Rick Brannan, this month's Biblioblog Blogger of the Month, used to describe what is now on offer to biblioblog consumers. The image is apt here in the US. One of my most striking memories of my first few weeks in America was a visit to a place called "Golden Corral" which offers a remarkable all-you-can-eat buffet for less than $10 a head including steak, Mexican, Italian, NC style "barbecue" and so on. And this place was populated by some seriously obese people.

Of course you should read it all, but I was particularly interested in this section that follows on from the use of the above image:

It will be interesting to see how the marketplace of blog-readers (are there really people who just read blogs and don’t blog at all?) responds to the increasing supply. Say’s Law (supply creates its own demand) has long been held untenable. Because I write something doesn’t mean that someone will read it. “If you build it, he will come” only works in the movies.

I think the supply of blogs that are actually aggregated and read will shrink as blog-readers reach their consumption limit. They’ll focus back on the blogs regularly posted with articles that provoke thought, and some of the excess blogs will either stagnate in-place or go away — which is why I think good group blogs have the best chance in the longer run.

And I think that’s a good direction, overall.

I know that I had to admit this finally when I dropped my old comprehensive blogroll, because it was tough to keep up to date, and replaced it with the dynamic Google blogroll, which is much easier to manage. What I have noticed, though, since going over to Google, is how few blogs every jump out of limbo status. I used to drop blogs manually into limbo if they had not posted for a month. Now, with Google, there's no need to do that -- if the blog doesn't post, it doesn't appear on the blogroll. Yet, it is very rare for one of those limbo blogs to get reignited. In other words, I think sustained provision is not becoming that much greater. Rather, every time a strong new blog becomes established, a couple more quietly bow out.

Blogger of the Month: James Tabor

Brandon Wason has been really busy this week, and has a fine interview with James Tabor who is the blogger of the month:

James Tabor: Blogger of the Month April 2007

Thanks, Brandon and James for an interesting read.