I would like to extend an invitation to you to join in on a collective blogging section of our upcoming winter issue of Reconstruction

Here is the original call:

Theories/Practices of Blogging

Our intent in this section of the issue will be to collect a wide range of bloggers and link up to their statements in regards to why they blog (something many of us are asked) and any statement they have on the theories/practices of blogging.

If you already have a post on this you can feel free to use it, or, if you are interested, you can submit a new one.

We will link to each statement from the issue at our site, with the intent of creating a hyperlinked list of statements on blogging that can serve as an introduction to blogging (or an expansion of knowledge for those already blogging).

If you are interested please contact me at mdbento @ gmail.com

don't forget about flickr where you can control the images that people see of you...

ok, this is something I just put over on ChartBeta - there's an illusion that we are in control of what other people think. We are in control of what we think and what we do, but in the end, we present ourselves to inform the opinions of others, and brands - but we can't actually control what they finally think about or even act towards us.

and therefore ( I don;t know if Michael's comment was tongue in cheek but...) we can't really control what Flickr shows us as some other fkr is going to put a pic up of us and then some other guy is going to leave a comment saying that I'm a prick.

I'm with you Piers, we can't control what they think. The best we can do is present ourselves as close to how we'd like them to think as possible and hope that's how they go. I guess the bottom line for me is that I'd much rather be the one starting the conversation than someone else. To bring it back to brands, I think far to many take a back seat in their communication. They are not proactively reaching out to fans or detractors.

Sure, brands set their identity, but we've learned to distrust them since so few of them speak from the heart. Over the years messaging has reached a point of complete dilution.

The way I approach my brand is different than the way a major corporation does. There's not a lot of bureaucracy. As I read on someone's site recently, "I'm my brain's publisher." I don't need to clear anything with legal or any of that stuff.

What you get from blogs authenticity, something brands these days are sorely missing.

That's one of the reasons I used the feed aggregator of Drupal on my site as a linkblog-of-me -- it's to establish my homepage as the "first foot forward" to provide context and hierarchy to all this activity that can be explored in isolation.

Back to Piers and Noah's points - control may have been too strong of a word. Guide would have been a better word. In the book Brand Gap, there's a quote that suggests “a brand isn't what you think it is, it's what you're client says it is� or at least something like that. My original intention was that you can definitely tell a story of who you want others to perceive you, and photos do a really good job of that. But of course photos do lie...