Wait! You're a postdoc, blogging under your own name? Are you insane?

Heh, I know, it does seem a little kooky at times.

Am I worried that my current advisor, or future colleagues (wherever they may be) will look askance at the idea of spending time blogging? I'd be lying if I said I was completely at ease with it, but I always come back to convincing myself of the personal utility of blogging. What do I mean by that?

Well, I plan on focusing primarily on blogging about science related topics, whether it be my own research, commenting on other research in my fields, and in thinking about issues related to science at large. This won't be a blog where I discuss my personal life, or complain about coworkers or things like that. There are definitely places for those kinds of blogs, but this isn't one of them. There won't be a hard firewall between the personal and professional, but there won't be LOLcat links (beyond that one, promise).

Instead, I see this as a way to more fully explore and think about issues that are already kicking around in my head. Stuff that my brain is chewing over, and will not let go. So while it may seem that this blog is going to take up a lot of time (and it may) but it might just let me offload some of that congitive processing time, refine its use, and free up resources for more obviously pertinent tasks. And this is one reason why I decided to do my blogging under my real name. That will force me to think a little more about my writing. Also, I didn't want to worry about my anonymous blog becoming 'outed' at some point, and risk hurting people I had written about. Better to prevent that temptation from doing that in the first place (but I certainly don't fault anyone for being anonymous. Sometimes a little spleen needs to be vented, and somethings in science are all messed up, and talking about that helps us all. A great example is YoungFemaleScientist).

And there will prolly be more indirect, and more distant in time, benefits of the blogging, related to becoming part of the broader science blogging community. That community is just a tip of the iceberg in the burgeoning Science2.0 movement (though I hesistate to call it a 'movement', that implies too much of a top down approach - it's more organic and distributed). I've got another post in the brain to discuss some aspects of Science2.0, but it seems obvious, and I'm convinced, that the increases in communication and interaction enabled by the spectrum of Web2.0 technologies can only help improve science and will improve the research and recognition of those involved. If I can get some 'early adopter' advantage, well, at this point I'll take whatever I can get! See, there is a selfish benefit to it all, which is a good way to motivate people to do things that also benefit the group at large.