So rather than over-thinking, I’ve tried to opt for do-ing. Small steps. But msloc430.net is up.
I let CogDog be the guide, set up the syndicated category hierarchy, installed the FeedWordPress plugin and let it rip. Bingo. Syn-dication.
Really this is just messing around. But lately I’m beginning to understand the value of iterating – especially if you have some vision of where you ultimately want to be. A good vision informs the messing around, and the messing around informs the vision.
Christina Hendricks exemplifies this, and shares a win in her post I made discussions on WordPress! It is “doing out loud” – the next step beyond thinking or working out loud. Each of these out-louds is valuable but my personal interest is in pushing myself more to do-out-loud.
Next steps for my proto-type site is to mess around more with slicing the syndication into logical streams. For this, again, CogDog provides a clear path and great advice. Very interested in experimenting more about the techniques to do this with the FeedWordPress plugin. And then I think I’ll feel ok to start to look at templates…something that speaks to my preference for clean, readable, visually-appealing design but doesn’t tax my limited (i.e., nonexistent) skills for coding/customizing.
Should have a good amount of time to mess with this over the coming weeks.
(Jeff Merrell photo Bogota, 2011)
Jeff Merrell 
Yes! Doing rather than overthinking. Important, because one can get stuck in the thinking stuff and not really get around to the doing stuff.
What is being syndicated to your site, and why? Can you explain how that’s important to your course?
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What I am looking at is syndicating blog posts from two groups: Students enrolled in the Northwestern University course and “open” participants. Open participants might be students who previously took the course or any practitioner who is interested in the topics we cover (organizational change and innovation inspired by enterprise social networks).
It’s important for a couple of reasons.
I do want to nudge students into blogging more openly. It now looks like we have an easy way for graduate students to set up student blogs via a Northwestern University WordPress resource.
I really want to have that mashup of practitioners and students. The topics we cover are all emerging, contemporary organizational issues. A “course” space – in my mind, anyway – seems like a different type of “safe” space for practitioners to explore ideas, without fear that they have to join some professional group list, or will be bombarded by one single point of view. So the mashup is important because it should push the learning for anyone jumping in…At least, in theory. 🙂
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