The blog as resume and autobiography

On my winter vacation this week, I've been spending some of my time sketching out a book proposal. The idea would be to explore the professional blog as a literary form that grows out of, and extends, two traditional forms: the resume and the autobiography. That might seem self-evident to blogging cognoscenti, but it's still unfamiliar to most people. Unusually for me, this book would address that audience. Profiles of readers I'd like to reach:

• The coffee shop owner. She belongs to Fair Trade, and has visited a number of her suppliers' plantations in Central and South America. A fan of art, baseball, and music, she integrates all these themes, creating a diverse, unique, and wholly un-Starbucks-like experience. Special activities include poetry readings, open-mic nights, and "the table project" which replaced all the tables in the store with themed creations made by artists who are regular customers. Her blog, if she had one, would be the resume and biography of a master retail store owner as well as, of course, the online representation of her store.
• The public works engineer. A former corporate engineer, he's responsible for the town's aging water system. Frequent repairs create a need for both immediate and long-range information flows. His blog would include up-to-date information about outages, repairs, and regular maintenance. (The basic facts would be syndicated elsewhere -- the newspaper, the town's website -- with more details available on the blog.) The blog would also educate the public about the water system, assess its status, and provide context for the inevitable discussion about its overhaul.
• The middle-school science teacher. He's a hands-on experimentalist who invites his students to approach science in the same way. As a lifelong naturalist and birder, he tells a wealth of funny and insightful stories about wildlife. His blog would chronicle his science experiments and wildlife experiences, for students and teachers in his own school and elsewhere.

I have long imagined that blogs would evolve in this direction. But as I survey the landscape in search of examples, I'm finding few of them. Most blogs are more personal than professional in the sense I'm defining here. Of those that identify themselves as professional, many are pseudonymous. Of those that use true names, surprisingly few seem to take the approach I envision: narrating the course of a career, articulating its public agenda, writing its permanent record.

I can think of two reasons why this isn't happening to the extent I imagined it would. First, because it hasn't yet occurred to most people. That would be a good reason to write the book.

But second, because it's the wrong idea. Most people wouldn't want to use a blog in this way or, if they did, would run into obstacles -- employer/employee friction, fear of future consequences -- that would prevent them from doing so. That would be a good reason not to write the book.

I'm painfully undecided at the moment, and would love to hear reasoned opinions one way or the other. If you blog your thoughts, the blogosphere will miraculously collect them for us. But I'm especially curious to know how non-bloggers outside the IT subculture see these issues. If you have friends, relatives, or associates who might like to weigh in, they're welcome to contact me the old-fashioned way.

Former URL: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2005/12/29.html#a1360