The ChinesePod Blog is Back

Woohoo! The ChinesePod Blog used to rock, and I'm so glad to see that it will be back to rock in 09. :D

rjberki,

From a management perspective, you're absolutely right that open-ended statements tend to stay open-ended. Internally, however, there are no open ended projects in that sense.

But it is unwise for us to make very specific promises to the community when it comes to the completion of tech projects. Must not over-promise - you know how that stuff works!   

Henning, I look forward to your inevitably smart comments. I feel exhumed and reanimated!

henning,

I agree with you, although I will refrain from commenting on our unholy alliances with the dark forces of the undead.

Hi guys,

I've never really got into blogging so I hope you'll forgive my ignorance when I ask what the main advantages are of having a separate blog site ,to just adding new threads on the Community section here? Mind you,I can see how threads can kind of get buried in the Community section here so it might be a tidy way to keep things together.Is that the main advantage,or are there others? Just curious and wanting some insight as to the hows and whys these things work.

I'm also curious as to whether the old blog is still available to look at old entries,and why it was stopped?

babardwan,

There are some archived posts over there. I stopped it 2 years ago because I wasn't finding the time to write it. We decided we would just merge the blog into the Conversations. Now I see that, once again, the medium is the message - the 2 things are simply different. The blog has a kind of permanence about it - like a place to stop by - while Conversations is more like a stream that keeps flowing. Each allows for diferent types of doscussion and I think the blog will allow for deeper discussion on certain topics.

The blog is also slightly more open to the outside world. It can go places where the site itself cannot and get involved in discussions around the web. I have lots of plans for it and if you drop by or subscribe to the feed I'll shre them with you.

Thanks a lot Ken for explaining the rationale behind it.I've had a look and it certainly looks interesting.I'll be sure to keep an eye on it.It's great that we once again are getting even more on offer.Seems very generous to me and also a justifiable show of confidence if we're to get a backstage tour.As we now have Twitter,uservoice,the blog,[? is Yammer for users ],and I think I've come across a few other Chinese pod user sites [am I missing any?],I'm wondering if it's possible to have a permanent tab [eg perhaps after the rankings tab on the community page] that has links to all these associated sites.Just an idea.Of course I could just bookmark them.But you should see my bookmarks list.In serious need of some housekeeping !

嗯, so what about Ken's personal blog then, also touching on eLearning concepts, where does it fit? Also, does that mean there are/will be other languagePod blogs, and wouldn't it make sense to group them under blog.praxislanguage.com or some such, since I guess many of the topics are likely to be similar?

Recently CPod has taken some good steps, including the UserVoice site, the weekly updates, and now the exhumination and reanimation of the blog.

As if somebody opened a window to let in some fresh air and wake everybody up. :)

Btw: The German blog has been around all the time. It's quieter and Anne has left us more than a year ago, but it's still alive :-)

http://blogs.chinesepod.com/de/

Joachim,

It's great to see you still on the case!

John has a very significant post over there today that gives a developmental overview of things ChinesePod. He has been busy.

Wow, looks like John and the rest of the staff are due for a well-deserved vacation! Thanks for all the hard work.

I'm looking forward to these new developments.  And I can't say how excited I am for full traditional support...I'm tired of hearing myself whine about that one ;-)

Cpod, 加油。

I'm not used to blogs so I'm not sure what the significance of "your comment is awaiting moderation" is beyond the meaning of the words,but this is what I wrote on the blog:

Great job guys.I’m very happy with CPod as is,but had great faith in your continuing to make it even more awesome as has been promised.It’ll be exciting to see all your hard work come to fruition soon.Can’t wait.I’m especially excited about the Assessment project as that had been the only suggestion I made and I didn’t know that it had actually been considered,let alone implemented.Thankyou.

Ken, John,

I have always been an advocate of greater transparency and I am of course thrilled to see any movement in this direction. I would like to see firmer completion dates called out when future projects are disclosed however. Open ended statements tend to stay open ended. I am looking forward to watching all things in John's post come to fruition. Heres to what I am sure will be a great year. The best of luck to you, and thanks for all the hard work.

RJ 

Goulniky,

I'll continue with my personal blog, but it will be non-CPod related stuff. I don't forsee other blogs around here for now and I didn't want to have this one under the Praxis name - corporate blogs are kind of a turn off, don't you think?