Surgery originally posted by dknNYC.
Johns Grant and Lowry will be debating the ridiculous topic, "Is Blogging Killing Planning?", under the IPA banner a few days from today here in London. They will be continuing a very sad strain of discussion that appeared on Richard Huntington's blog.
This debate topic really isn't a relevant one, as planning isn't being killed by anything. Planners are now working in more parts of the communications mix than ever, doing useful thinking about business problems, inspiration, communications contexts, and accountability. No one cares about this topic except for the navel-gazing planners who engage in bad blogging in the first place. As long as that's the case, the question is moot, as all the clients, co-workers, and non-blogging planners will remain uninfected.
Maybe the topic should instead be, "Is Blogging Killing Planning Careers?" I've asked this question of myself several times. Writing this blog has been an eye-opener. On the one hand, I want the stuff I write to be interesting and new. On the other hand, I have a career that might be seriously hurt if I give away good thinking or worse, say something obvious and stupid here. (And I still manage to do obvious and stupid things, even with long, self-imposed periods of blog silence.)
When I see the amount of ridiculously abstract theory that's posted on planning blogs, I worry less about planning, and more about the careers of the authors. I, for one, have decided that I will never work with some of these planners because I now know they can't keep their five-dimensional Venn diagrams under control.
The only good news is that once in a while I read something genuinely good out here in the Plannersphere, and it reminds me to judge the message and its author, but not the medium.