Is blogging useful to me?

While attending the first FP7 Networked Media concertation meeting in Vilamoura (Algarve, Portugal), my colleague and good friend Touradj Ebrahimi (EPFL) convinced me that blogging is actually a useful activity. Sofar I thought that blogging is just a digital form of exhibisionism, but he claimed that he often refers to his blog (see http://touradjebrahimi.blogspot.com/) to avoid repeating the same explanation over and over again to different people. This sounds quite attractive to me. Another thing I realized while talking to him and looking at his blog, is that a blog is a particular form of outsourcing my memory, much like note books, sticky notes, to do lists, and photographs of white boards (of which I have a lot). Maybe I should look for some serious publications on the art and usefulness of blogging to find more justification. Any suggestions are more than welcome. But then, maybe it is also just a matter of trying out new technology that younger generations accept "as is" and that us - the old horses in the field who actually contributed to making all this technology possible - should make an effort to get involved. Well, this is my effort :-).

So, here is my blog page and it will be an interesting experience to see if I can get the damn thing up to date. Touradj claims it takes him 15 minutes to write his weekly blog, every saturday morning. We will see! He also insists that blogs should be short and relevant. At this point, the only thee relevant issues in this blog are: "(1) I started a (2) blog because of (3) Touradj". Evidence for issue (2) is the blog itself, for the other two I included a photograph as evidence.

That's me enjoying a lunch in Vilamoura.
And that's Touradj.