Blogger A Day Call: Hello is Kammie there?

Imagine being a junior in college. You walk into class on the first day. You open a notebook and talk to your roommate waiting. At the front of the room are two women laughing and telling jokes about communications. Then one leaves and one woman say, “Welcome to communications! You guys are in the most exciting major in the school!” You’ve just met Kammie Kobyleski, your professor.

That’s a bit like our conversation began. Even on the phone, Kammie’s excitement is a powerful and appealing. She fills the space she occupies with energy. Anyone near can’t help but be filled up with with the same excitement.

It was so easy to picture Kammie teaching when she talked about it. Her enthusiasm for the kids in her class was coming through the telephone. She was telling them they were the luckiest kids on campus. She said that they were often new to blogging and that they thought it was uber cool that she knew so much about it. We talked about how much fun it must be to have a roomful of students ready to try new things. We talked about sending them out explore new techonolgies, to find out how they work. She made sure that I knew that they were just the kind of kids who were ready to do just that kind of thing.

That part of the conversation drifted over into how fast technology changes. Kammie wondered whether bigger schools had an easier time preparing their students to know how to use it. She explained that her department was grappling with the issue that too much focus seemed to be on theory and not enough on the real action. I pointed out that I had recently worked on a book for the the department of Astrodynamics at MiT and that they were wrestling with the same issue — how to prepare studenst for an industry that needed graduates who not only understood the techology, but also had personal and interpersonal skills. We agreed that big schools didn’t have it any easier after all.

Then we got to the heart of where we were going, making books. Kammie and I talked the book that Phil and I are making from his blog. She mentioned that she might like to make a book one day maybe. I told her she was in a lucky place to know now that was her plan. My point was that when you start out knowing you’re going to make a book, it’s much easier, that you can set up your blog to become a deep expanded outline. I talked her through how a blog can be a stronger outline than one she might write as a standalone.

Kammie and I tinkered with the idea of how she sketch the rough outline of chapers she would cover in the book-to-be, setting up blog categories for each. We discussed how a series of posts under the chapter/category topic would organize the information automatically as she writes — one at at time or all in a row. Kammie and I visualized an entire book coming together from daily blog posts that Sunday afternoon as we talked together leisurely on the telephone.

It was so exciting!

I have a feeling that just about everyone who experiences time with Kammie has that very same thought.

B.A.D. Blogger Quote

Blogging is open access to people. You reach out and there they are, receptive, open, and gracious . . . If it were a live networked event, you might be intimidated —Kammie Kobyleski

Stop by Kammie’s Blog, Passion Meets Purpose, and say hi!

Thanks, Kammie, you B.A.D. Blogger!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Want to be a B.A.D. Blogger see the. . . a B.A.D. Blogger? page in the sidebar.