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.