- The Oberlin blogs have been around for over four years. Thank goodness for Ben and Lillie for getting it off the ground and running! (Yay awesome bosses!)
- I've been working in, around, and with the Oberlin blogs for almost that long. I know this because I wrote my first post here almost four years ago to the day, all about the most memorable November 4th of my life (ah I still get shivers reading that post).
- The world, especially the online world, has changed loads in the last few years. (You know it to be true. You're here, aren't you?)
So. We're changing with the times. We're opening up our minds and our worlds into a new space. Think this is crazy new-fangled nonsense? Maybe, possibly, but bear with me. Here's a video of the master blog dude himself back in 2008 right after he started here at Oberlin:
Listen up to about 2 minutes in for all this future-forward thinking about blogging and where we're going with it. THIS GUY. I work for this guy.
Ben and I had several (recorded, but not yet available) conversations earlier this summer about the future of blogging. I'll try and sum it up here (I'll add the audio when we have it in a digestible form):
I spend a lot (nay, a TON) of my time researching and thinking about social trends. My job, in half a nutshell, is the internet and how people communicate in this space. Social media is the word that easily defines much of my job, but more often than not, my day is filled with strategizing how to make things better as time and the internet and the people using it move forward together. The most arresting thing I've found (in my own life and in my research) is a desire for diverse and fascinating content — and it's not just about writing anymore.
What's content? Well, it's STUFF. It's everything we make and we interact with. Each thing we present means something different, plays a different role in how we begin to understand and react to what we are taking in. For me, everything is a storytelling vehicle — whether it be a photo, a video, a poem, a blog post, a recipe... really, the list is practically endless. With the changing web, rockingly awesome writing is still highly valued, but it's no longer the only way we get information, whether it be at the beginning or the end of our exploration into something new.
To change with the times, we're changing the Oberlin blogs and the folks who work with us here: our newest members of the team are writers, photographers, audio storytellers, and illustrators — truly appropriate for the no-holds-barred creative community here at Oberlin. Welcome, Ben, Charlotte, Dale, Dara, Karalyn, Margaret, Mya, Ness, and Paris! You're in for such a treat, dear blog-watchers. We're gonna make your world AWESOME.
