Bloggers call for transparency. But do they measure up themselves?

Last week I joined in on the crayon-sponsored second-life coffee chat.  There I sat with steaming coffee in hand attempting to get my avatar into the proper room and oriented so that I was not staring strangely at a wall or other inanimate object.  It's been a while since I've had to chat one handed.  And certainly never while seated in my office.

What began as an interesting experiment quickly turned into a high speed scroll chase.  I was left with all of second life no longer visible as I had enlarged the chat window to cover every area of my screen in a vain attempt to keep up.

So I reverted to private chatting with a few folks and then we all returned to our world, pretending we had been working on something work related.

Before I lost track of the conversation, there was some very interesting discussion regarding transparency.

People were for or against companies using blogs, happy to slam Edelman and quick to demand things like accountability and ethics.  And it became apparent that everyone had a slightly or drastically different concept of "transparency". It got me thinking. It seems to me that what we are really asking for when it comes to transparency is disclosure of intent.

I'm going to say it a little more forcefully.  Transparency is disclosure of intent.

It struck me that it's not exactly fair that we demand this level of transparency from others if we haven't gone through this exercise ourselves.  And I'm likely not alone as I just stumbled across Kate's open and self-aware post where she revists why we blog.

I don't blog just so I can tell people they should get a life.

I don't blog just to cover up my blog envy.

And I certainly don't blog just for the thrill and hits of getting caught up in a meme.

I blog for ALL these reasons.  It's about status.  It's about having a voice that others respect.  And it's about connecting with others whom I respect because (frankly) they are smarter, faster, wiser, sexier, and better dressed than me.  (Masi's socks excluded.)

Why do you blog?

Image Source: Xabier.M