Oh, I’m so busted. Good call on that one Erik. You should go read his post, and then mine will make more sense. And, because its a really good argument for how you can get involved with citizen journalism.
Anyways, the reason I’m writing this is he called me out for often just typing “blah, blah, blah” when Alder Bruer is talking. I can’t argue with him, and its pretty legit. But I can explain why I do it. He’s a bit of a challenge to blog. I’ll talk about that, and a few other challenges.
Of all the blogging I do around city hall, the four people who challenge me the most, are four alders.
Bruer, Pham-Remmele and Compton tend not to talk in complete sentences. Its usually one large run on sentence that changes direction, with Bruer, multiple times. And sometimes, I don’t understand what they are even saying. Bruer usually gets the blah, blah, blah, when he starts to repeat himself or starts relating some story that is completely bastardized that I can’t figure out what the relevance is. I should probably try to blog it, but its usually 5 or 6 minutes in and I can’t follow what he’s saying or why, so its hard to type that quickly and make sense of it and sometimes when I get done, I don’t know what my notes say. And, sometimes its a good time for a bathroom break – cuz he’lll still be talking when I come back.
The fourth person is Verveer. I have the same challenge that I have with Bruer, its that I find them repeating themselves and not saying anything new. So, am I supposed to keep typing, or just wait for them to make a new point? With Bruer, I just wait for a new point, and sometimes the “blah, blah, blah” is because I don’t know what the point is. Its just hard to follow his point that gets lost in soooooooo many words. And sometimes, my brain just takes a vacation.
My other big challenges,
1) Room 300 in the MMB, you can’t hear. The air conditioners make too much noise in the summer time.
2) Conversations at committees where more than one person is talking at the same time and the chair isn’t controlling the meeting or they are really just having a good back and forth conversation.
3) Once I start getting behind on something, knowing how to shorten it up a bit and get back on track – which is why you sometimes get the – I missed some here.
4) People who want to talk to me. You can’t talk to me and get a good quality blog the next day. Cuz I can’t listen to you and respond to you and type and listen at the same time. Usually, I want to talk to the person who wants to talk to me, and they usually have something good to add to the blog, but the timing is just not good.
And, I should note, its much easier to blog a well chaired meeting, and my favorites are the County Board meetings. McDonell is one of the best chairs of any meeting I attend. Their agendas and use of acronyms and first names is more of a challenge, but I can usually figure those out after the fact. And, as with any meeting, I do try to just use last names and spell out acronyms for the reader. Perhaps I should type what they say and then put last names and explanations in parenthesis, so you might see me change that practice.
Back to Erik’s post, for the record, I do have an audio recorder that I carry with me, the biggest challenge with that, batteries, batteries and more batteries and carrying the battery charger with me. I suppose, I could start recording to supplement, interesting idea. It’s particularly easy in room 201 where I can record right off the sound system.
Anyways, thanks for the good post Erik, that’s my (perhaps weak) explanation of blah, blah, blah and some of my blogging challenges. He probably could have busted me on a few more weaknesses, which I continue to work on, and constructive criticism always welcome. As as are new bloggers to this site, let us know if you are interested, even if you only post a few times, that is what this site is here for. And yes, you can disagree with me, seriously, its ok.
Hey, as Brenda knows, sometimes you an be in the same room – even the same conversation – with the people she mentions, and not know where the point is going. I used to say that Bruer speaks with commas, not periods. If you are at a Council meeting when Thuy starts talking, you will notice alders turning to each other and whispering, “What is she talking about?”
You generally know where Verveer is going, but even he will admit that he does tend to go on, especially when he is thanking people for helping bring resolution or consensus to an issue.