Quick Shout to Some Locals

Want to know the secret to qual­i­ty blog­ging? It’s easy: pub­lish or per­ish. It’s a les­son I’ve tried to give myself here, off and on, for a good, oh, six (sev­en?) years since the days I was an under­em­ployed ex-grad stu­dent rail­ing on Blog­ger. With every relapse I promise to write more. To recom­mit to this often very reward­ing, if lit­tle read, blog. Too often it’s in vain.

I know I’m not alone. One of the meth­ods I think I’ll employ to revive Kens­ing­ton Blues is to reach out to the local blo­gos­phere more fre­quent­ly. You know, the pow­er of pos­i­tive rein­force­ment. Not only is it good to encour­age the folks you like most online, it’s mutu­al­ly reward­ing. Just the sort of thing to make you get back into the game.

In light of this, I thought I’d men­tion two folks whose work has­n’t gone unno­ticed by this read­er. Marisa has brought her old stand­by, Apart­ment 2024, back to life with a love­ly assort­ment of pho­tos and brief descrip­tions. It’s the sort of thing that I often dream of doing, a thought that usu­al­ly cul­mi­nates in me won­der­ing if it would look bet­ter on Word­Press or if I should just ditch and move to Tum­blr. It’s the per­fect way to doc­u­ment a life. No hifa­lutin man­i­festos here, just great pic­tures and notes on a sim­ple, ele­gant life. Hats off!

I’d be remiss if I did­n’t men­tion my co-work­er Karl Mar­ti­no’s work over at Philly Future. Kar­l’s been the care­tak­er there since my ear­li­est days of dis­cov­er­ing the Philly blo­gos­phere. You want some­one up to their ears in hyper­local? Kar­l’s been doing it before that became a buzz­word. Hell, I’ve often thought that if philly.com were seri­ous about rein­vent­ing itself, they’d ask Karl what he was able to fig­ure out so long ago.

Late­ly, Kar­l’s been play­ing cura­tor once again, bring­ing a bit of that Dar­ing Fire­ball mojo to the site. If you’re a cyn­ic like me who thinks blog­ging is, like, total­ly dead, think again. Kar­l’s still find­ing great folks doing cool stuff in the Philly area. Stop over there and spend some time catch­ing up.