I am a Thinking Blogger

Skeet gave me a Thinking Blogger award! She did this a bit ago and I am way behind in my bit in participating in this award. She did so while I was on massive doses of prednisone, which she understands isn't the best time for me to actually think. At least I hope so, since I have been unforgivably slow in even acknowledging the award.

She also made this hard by making the easy tags for thinking bloggers hard. Soooo...I am going to talk about bloggers that make me think that don't know me from Adam.

1. Steve Rubel- MicroPersuasion-This is a thinking blogger I really adore. I have subscribed to his feed since I figured out aggregation. I read it even before that. It is a PR and Marketing blog and I would love for him to post more. Even if you don't think you do PR and Marketing...you probably do and even if you don't you need to know about how it is done. Today he posted a really good piece on editorial calendars. Why did this matter to me? For a number of reasons: 1. I had sort of forgotten the existence of such things and it never occured to me to look them up online for places that had content related to topics I deal with at work. Sure, I use the National Health Observances calendar and Brownielocks to give people the heads up but tailoring our content to what is hot in the media really matters. Knowing the planned hot media topics puts us ahead of the game. Plotting out a way for our department to do a social calendar on these things because after all our crew has their own schedules-even better. It also saves me from emailing and saying I need articles related to ___________ next week. Then it made me ponder how I can do this to make work more productive on a smaller scale.

2. The ladies at Devotionals for Women . A story, bible references, a prayer, discussion. Definitely makes you think. Simple formula, powerful stuff. Stop squirming everyone. Christianity can be a very, very good thing...especially for thinkers.

3. Get Rich Slowly- No get rich tips here. J D won't tell you to go for the lottery ticket. Just solid financial good sense. Nothing surprising but it keeps you on the right track. I need that. I KNOW all about managing money. I have taken the classes. I have read the books. I have even helped write tips and newsletter pieces on it. A daily dose reminding me to do it...priceless.

4. Docuticker- Shirl Kennedy makes me look brilliant every single day. She does an amazing amount of work compiling the very best, most recently released papers, research reports and government documents. If there was ever an under recognized blogging gem-Shirl Kennedy is it.

5. Nancy White- Full Circle Online Interaction Blog. Ok, I know at the beginning I said I didn't know any of my thinking bloggers. I do know this one. I met her last year at BlogHer. I am sure you all don't remember my swooning then, right? I still swoon just thinking about it. Brilliant woman who has sooooooooo much on her plate professionally and at home right now. I wish I could sit at her knee and type for her on a daily basis just so everyone gets what it is like to converse with her. (and oh yeah, so I could converse with her on a regular basis) In any case, her blog is still worth subscribing to just so you can gasp and say wow when she does post an incredible bit of Nancy thinking or really an incredibly obvious synthesis of a group thinking and talking about this thing we call community.

I say incredibly obvious because once she puts it out there you go "Oh yeah, THAT is what has been swimming around in my brain and his brain and her brain but none of us has managed to say it LIKE THAT...and now...isn't that just smack me in the head obvious" That being said, she isn't someone you can skim. You have to READ the posts and think about them. Sometimes you must read them more than once. Even. Me. Who. Never. Reads. Things. Again. Then you will turn them over and ponder them. Then you perform your own little operation on them and explain them to people who do not get online community. Of course, by that point you have turned into some mad online community evangelist once again and people get roped into all sorts of things. Like blogging. Wikis. Message boards. Community building. Dissertations.

I am in big trouble on days when Rubel and Nancy White both have amazing posts. Combine that with a good new study or govt piece on Docuticker and I probably won't stop working even when I go to sleep.

The other two keep me on the straight and narrow. I need all five in my life to jump start all nature of thinking.

I don't want to tag them because I don't want them to feel obligated (especially since again, they don't know me) but in my book, they all truly deserve The Thinking Blogger Award. If they would like to join in, Skeeter has the guidelines.