Raising the sails

Jung on the Shelf

I’ve taken some time today to organize my home office.  I’m about to begin studies at the C. G. Jung Institute of New York, a journey which will likely last at least the next four years.  A great part of the effort will be expended journeying through the pages gathered now on these two shelves.

Like preparing for a long ocean journey, I’ve been doing what I can to gather my “gear” and order things so that they are easily retrievable.  It’s a process that mirrors the work I’ve done over the last month getting this blog streamlined and built out in such a manner that I can optimize what time I have moving forward generating content.

“Practice means the things one does – the steps, the processes, and the moves.  In most approaches to inquiry there is a tendency to formalize and articulate the practice so that it becomes an identifiable method.  Etymologically the word method refers to the way over, across, r through.  It is a pathway marked by previous travelers and known to be reliable.  In conducting an inquiry, the method is often seen as being of equal importance to the results.” Coppin and Nelson, The Art of Inquiry, pg. 89

Over the past year I’ve tried out hundreds of plugins, widgets, social media platforms and tools that are available to us if we desire to create a publishing footprint in the digital landscape.  For those interested in the moves I’ve made to find my current footing:

Phase one: (implementing methods learned from Chris Brogan at his bootcamp)

• Self hosted WordPress blog at Tubu.net
• Thesis premium WP theme
• Feedburner account to track rss feeds
• Google Reader to gather feeds
• Twitter as main outposting tool
• used website grader to learn ways to improve (since last year moved from a grade of 6 to 98.8)

Phase two: Optimizing WordPress blog and finding stats that are useful

• WP for Blackberry for posting on the go.
• daily automated backup S3 plugin using Amazon cloud services (pennies a day)
• Search API plugin that allows advanced search features
• lifestreaming, podcasting and translating plugins
• random post plugins for increased page views and page indexing
• simple trackback validation and akismet plugins to handle spam
• Flickr pro account for shared photos from blackberry (great stats)
• Bit.ly url shortener (great stats)
• WP Stats plugin as well (great stats)

(I’ve been using Intense Debate to handle my comments for months now, but the verdict is still out in my mind.  I’ve had two problems which have not been addressed by inquiries.  Spam collects in two locations and needs deleting twice and I’ve had many of my reply comments appear in the back end only.  Many “A” blogger use Disqus and I’m considering changing systems.)

In many ways the focus I’ve put into this space has allowed me to outfit the sailing ship I want.  Now I can set off to sea pretty confident I’ve got the right tools at my disposal.