I, too, struggle with finding a balance between depth and breadth in my blogging practice. One of the many things that impresses me about Ethan is that he manages to do both (though perhaps at some cost, with respect to exhaustion).

My notes from Carl’s inspiring talk include a reference to “speed blogging vs. slow blogging” (and also to Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s mantra “slow down, let go”) … and just as Ethan’s posts reduced the pull I felt to post more extended entries on all the talks, your post satisfies my desire to post a separate entry on Carl’s talk.

For me, blogging is very much a practice of processing the stimuli I am exposed to - and I felt very much overstimulated at Pop!Tech. Like you, I take a slower approach, and yet I find if I take it too slow, I never get around to posting my notes (and reflections) … and thus miss the opportunity for processing. I suppose there is always a tension between input, processing and output - and between focusing on the past, present and future - but I do find that the events I blog about are easier to remember … not sure what’s the cause and what’s the effect.

I often feel backblogged, and find there is typically a narrow window during which I might blog about a recent event or experience … after which time other events and experiences transpired which supersede the unblogged ones, and so I rarely go back for further processing. So while I, too, praise slowness (in blogging and other dimensions of life, online and offline), I don’t want to slow down too much … but I have to admit that in writing that last statement, I’m wondering what the risk would really be in slowing down further. I guess I’ll stop writing, slow down, and reflect more on this.