I spoke recently on dotfive about our experience at the new Wordcamp – openly I am not a blogger by trade… it’s simply a tool for our design and development, and I enjoy the craft with my writing background, but don’t consider it the central theme to our development.
Maybe in that respect, I view much of what I saw from the outside in – a business professional watching a niche industry spread it’s wings more and more onto the net. Though coming into your own can have it’s growing pains: poorly doctored marketing slogans, or click defined buzz words tend to be a repeated theme. Most of us have grown accustomed to it; but it’s slowly eating at my net enthusiasm.
This opinion is varied indeed, most certainly mine is biased, and can depend largely how or where you grew up. I had a large group of friends with varying ages, some of which I still talk with; but I was also taking the path of designer with writing tendencies, and I had little taste for segregated clicks that guarded inside jokes, member idolization, or the outsiders occasional snide glare.
While I sat within some of the speaking, and heard the occasional ‘Get your blog on’ or ‘Got blog’ cliché, I felt a slight reflection of high school days gone past. I understand the need to reflect a certain rapport with your target demographic, but huddling inside a maze of 2.0 jokes with lead developers self proclaiming themselves the new elite, only slightly nauseates me. We will always have our own inside remarks, it’s inevitable in that we do something others do not (just like lawyers or doctors or creative directors, we all have inside knowledge to our craft) – but when it feels like a poor attempt at elevating your social status, for reasons I won’t delve into armchair psychology, it almost always feels tacky. I would have thought that most of us, past school and onto our professions, would grow tired at building our own empire of cool – and learned long ago that it can make or break an image, depending on it’s market design.
The irony of the fact that I’m passing judgement on the industry terms in an event where I caught all of the jokes, is not lost on me indeed – nor the potential for feeling as if I’m outside a group that doesn’t regard me as a member. Regardless of the covert intentions, I’m bored of the slogans already, and this post has already run it’s quick course.
Side notation, Wordcamp’s first event was held on the weekend anniversary of the tragic hiroshima bomb. I just call them as I see them.