Are we a community?

Bud's post in response to Doug's post was one I was glad to read. Bud's point, which he made back in November, too, is that there is no such thing as "the edublogosphere" but rather that there are lots of us out here doing what we do -- whatever that is. He said in November and quoted again now:

Mostly, the assumption that’s troubling me so much is that there’s one group (community - whatever) out there that exists for educational conversation via electronic media, and that we should all try to engage and involve everyone in that one (fallacious) group so that we’re all friends and reading and commenting each other. And that we’ll all agree on where that group should go, when they should meet, and what we’ll all do when we get there. Or that we ever agreed in the first place.

Ain’t going to happen. Not now, not ever. Never did happen, in fact. We all construct our blogrolls, our Twitter friends, or our other social networking relationships for our benefit and to meet our own unique needs. That leads some folks to add everyone as a friend. Others, no one. And whichever way you want to go is fine for you - but please don’t require that I or anyone else goes with your system to meet our own needs.

I think that there is possibly a community of those "A-List" edubloggers whom everyone wants to read. Or most everyone, anyway. But there is no way I will ever be part of that community. I don't even want to be part of that community, really.

I am interested in what I am interested in. I read what I want to read where I want to read it. I am not in love with Twitter and probably never will be -- but you never know!

Blogging, for me, is as much about reflection as it is about exchanging ideas. I will stay here, read the blogs I read and add a few more from time to time and be happy. If I am not part of the "community", that's OK. I am doing this for me.