Top 5 Blogs for personal and professional development

After reading news and blogfeeds, some great, some not-so, a collegue challenged me to take a serious look at what I read most often, and why. This was interesting, and I thought I’d share the results.

So here they are, at least, these are the ones that I read regularly. As I made the list, I realised more than five fought for my attention, but since the challenge was for five, I’ll list my favorites first. The others fall into the runner-up category, I guess

One thing you’ll find about many of them, they’re not the ones that ‘everyone thinks are the best’ or that ‘I think I should be reading because they’re the party favorites’. These are ones that I scan daily, click on regularly, and generally enjoy reading.

• My Name Is Kate – Kate Trgovac writes about social media, online communications, digital marketing and other creative things. She has an awesome ‘geek’ sense, yet can cut to the chase of issues quickly. Smart. Informed. Enjoyable.
• Performancing – I started reading Performancing when I wanted to learn more about blog tools. I was pleasantly suprised by the accessible writing style and quality of information in the posts and articles. Now it’s a site that offers free tools and resources for bloggers.
• Boing Boing – A directory of wonderful things. It’s hard to say much more beyond their own tagline other than to say I’ve been informed, shocked, stirred to action, and entertained by Cory and the crew for years. With appologies to A&E, It’s Attention Well Spent.
• Download Squad – If you’re looking for the latest application, utility, tool, toy or patch, the fine folks at Download Squad seem to be on top of the game. Running Windows and Ubuntu desktops, laptops and servers, I often find myself visiting their archives to see what cool toys they’ve uncovered. Oh, and they do news too.
• Micro Persuasion – The blog of Steve Rubel, ‘..explores how social media is transforming marketing, media and public relations.’ Steve. You either love him or hate him. But you can’t deny he’s got the pulse of social media. I read Steve to find out what seems to be happening in the ‘big’ corporate side of social media.

All right, that’s my top five. One thing though, as I reviewed this post prior to hitting the publish button, the members of the top five seem to vary, depending on what’s happening in my home/professional life. Beleive it or not, there have been days that go by without my reading Micro Persuasion (sorry Steve).

Sometime in the future, I’ll ping my next five.

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