I love to share knowledge. It’s the first thing on my resume. Knowledge sharing is one of the most beautiful things I can imagine. It’s like sharing love or sharing happiness. It’s interesting and empowering, and brings people together. It’s probably my favourite thing about the internet but it’s all too easy to start abusing the privilege.
I sometimes become aware, that the amount of knowledge coming into my life is more than the average person can deal with in a day. I’m a grad student who spends 7 hours a day being completely inspired in class, while at least another 7 hours are spent trying to read as many articles, speak with as many people, and watch as many videos online as possible. I have trouble finding time to sleep, but I can’t stop. I’m addicted to being interested.
The ‘share’ button on Facebook, and the ‘retweet’ feature on Twitter, while being some of the most useful additions to my online communications, have truly begun to annoy some of the people in my internet life. My goal when sharing information, is to spark interest in others. If I found it interesting, others surely will too. I almost feel that by not sharing, I’m withholding information from those I care about. Unfortunately, if I’m posting 15 articles a day, most people will just start ignoring them all. I’m getting a 1-2% response rate; I don’t want my life to be an acquisition mailing.
I want to become more selective with the things I share. If the great Seth Godin has taught me anything, it’s that permission is better than interruption every time. Thus the creation of this blog. I want to be able to take everything I’m learning and articulate it back in my own words. I want to be able to edit the 20 amazing ideas I hear into the most useful and important thing I learned that day. I hope that this will be the place for that.
This is where the knowledge sharing will happen. Feel free to share back.
I think it all comes down to how much stuff you want people to read, and where you share that info. Anyone who subscribes to your blog has signed up to read all the info you share, that same person might be your Facebook friend, and while subscribed to your blog, doesn’t necessarily want all your shared items fed through their news feed on an hourly/daily basis.