Tagged with: adventure mapping • blogging • commenting
Can you use adventure maps to analyze the function of comments on blogs?
Ali suggested I give it a try. Great idea! We are studying the effects of comments. I am experimenting with adventure mapping, the highly playful, interactive and intuitive way of communicating complex elements in your project. Why not combine them?
Why not?
So. Mapping The Project Shrink blog and the function of comments.
See if it provides me with some insights.
Every adventure starts with a quest. The purpose of the blog. Why am I writing?
For me it’s a personal thing. I want to sharpen my mind around this riddle: how can we run projects in a virtual and global environment by focusing on social interactions? It’s about being able to combine sociology, psychology, management, leadership, project management, communication and everything else that comes to mind in one fluent motion, in any context.
Yeah. I know.
The path I am on is spiral. It looks like I am running around in circles. Heck. It sometimes feels like I am in this loop. Lead actor in my own Groundhog Day. I write about topics and revisit them again and again over a longer time frame, refining them, adding to them, and mixing topics I didn’t know were related.
Did you notice I link a lot to my own posts and combine elements I have talked about before? No? Anyway. That’s why.
I just circle around the quest, making the topics more and more my own.
I use my own archive extensively. You forget what you write. But that is why you write and have an archive. The blog knows what I know, or used to know.
Monks. Comments.
Along this path I encountered people who provide comments. Thank you! You have no idea how I appreciate that.
Talking about paths and spiral movements creates the image of monks along the stairs you are climbing.
This adventure map is turning into “India Jones” meets “Seven Years In Tibet“.
There are comments to keep me on the path, that keep me going, that motivate me. Happy and cheerful monks.
There are questions. Curious and sometimes skeptic monks. Fantastic way to focus your efforts. Your direction.
There are more questions. Great way to see if what I am writing is relevant to people. Is perceived as a “real” issue? The “keeping it real” monk.
Comments are awesome in creating social connections. I met some great people through my blog comments.
There are comments that are feedback to the content and help me refine the concepts.
Although people agree and disagree in the comments, it’s always been respectful. But than again, it’s my house, so I remove disrespectful comments. This doesn’t happen very often, but there is no room for that.
What do you think?
Want to draw a map of your own blog? Do you see other applications?
Hi Bas,
You are not alone running around in circles. The more you tie up your previous posts, the more we feel we are accelerating our running in circles. Your final goal (Quest) is clear, but the path towards is not. This your post shows clearly.
Before complexity Theory, linear cause and effect dominated our thinking. This thinking was turned around as we discovered the Butterfly Effect, in which small changes (causes) might generate huge effects. These effects do not push us on a linear ladder of goals; it throws us on a spiral path. Small changes or feedback comments might generate such effects to find us circling around.
Bas, your post did this to me.
Ha! So true. Yes, sometimes it’s about enjoying the writing and having the strong conviction that yes, you are on the right path. On step at a time