Students of Garrett Graff know that the first sentence of Chapter 10 in Robert Scoble and Shel Israel’s book, naked conversations reads: “No one wrote the official blogging rule book.”

That means that I am in unchartered water without a life preserver as I experiment to find my blogging voice for this blog which is part of my Social Media coursework . Each week I wonder where the conversation will take me as I ruminate on the weekly readings. I am grateful that there are no “blogging police” and that I have free reign to make it up as I go along…as long as I am having fun (class requirement!).

And, with the semester just about half over, I realize that I am having fun. I was skeptical early on about “this whole blogging thing,” and I still think there are a lot of random posts and a lot of random comments out there–in the blogosphere–that make me shudder and say, “who cares?” But then I think that there are a lot of talk radio stations (and people who call in to those shows) and tabloids (The Weekly World News was once a favorite in my office). We all have choices about what we read and what we listen to. We are fortunate enough to live in a country where freedom of speech is our right, and I am fortunate that there are no blogging rules that I have to follow as I seek my own style; my own voice.

Of course, naked conversations tries to guide us so that we won’t to it ‘wrong.’ Or so we won’t do it wrong for our company. Since my first blogging efforts are for my self, I can only hope that I will avoid the “forced and selfish” — or worse — Elvis on black velvet catagories! Moving forward, I will try to “be linky (Tip #9)” and engage in more conversations (so classmates: PLEASE COMMENT!).