http://historying.org/2009/01/03/aha-ing-friday-recap/ thoughts on scholarship and history in a digital age Sat, 28 Jan 2012 04:12:17 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://historying.org/2009/01/03/aha-ing-friday-recap/#comment-158 Sun, 04 Jan 2009 17:33:43 +0000 http://historying.org/?p=516#comment-158 [...] Cameron Blevins at History-ing provides evidence for Hotshot Harry’s theory about the AHA being largely about “celebrity”-watching.  Blevins seems to have done better than most bloggers in finding the elusive wireless connection at the Hilton–and see Ann Bartow’s advice in the comments on the previous post for exactly where she found a wireless connection.  More substantially, Blevins reports on a session on writing for readers outside of the academy, which slided into a discussion of blogging: The first session I attended was The Promise and Pitfalls of Writing for Readers beyond the Academy, at which I was that guy who embarrassingly enters late and bumps into people while finding a seat (in this case, on the floor). It was a relatively informal panel, with none of the typical reading of papers in a monotone voice, and with a lot of back-and-forth with the audience. I found it interesting that for the first part of the session, blogging was never touched upon. Then an audience member brought it up, and the panelists began to fervently speak about it for a fair amount of time. What surprised me was the relatively positive attitude many of the panelists carried towards blogging. This might be a kind of self-selective mechanism, as panelists for a session on popular writing are probably not the stuffy academic types that look down their noses at blogging. On the other hand, I got the sense that blogging as a whole has become much more mainstream and accepted within the academy. The panel also reminded me of the kind of “exercise” aspect of writing on a blog – in that it forces you to write and is a great tool for experimentation and self-improvement. [...]

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