On 13 June I created my first blog post – a test post really to see if I could do it. Almost seven months and 150 posts later, we have come to the end of 2009. The following are my most-viewed posts of 2009:
(10) HigherEdThink. 29 July. This was the first post in what ultimately would become a series called “Antidotes to GroupThink” in which I summarize the ideas of people whose thinking is outside the mainstream of conventional wisdom. Our first GroupThink antidote was Anne Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, who dared suggest that higher education trustees need to take a more active role in higher education governance.
(9) “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute.” 13 July. In this post, I poked a little fun at the Charleston Gazette for publishing an op-ed commentary opposing the minimum wage from someone who works for “Dr. Evil,” a not-so-fine gentleman who operates bogus business and industry “think-tanks.”
(8) Gambling with Students’ Futures: Part II. 30 September. This post highlighted a report about risky investments made by 529 plans.
(7) Chemical Peel, Anyone? 28 July. This post, the second in a series of posts on research parks, described the challenge of revitalizing the Dow Tech Center in South Charleston. Not surprisingly, the advice contained therein appears to have gone unheeded by the powers that be.
(6) The Game of Charades. 21 July. I suspect it was the combination of my discussion of the hiring of Marshall University’s athletic director and my candor about higher education hiring practices that made this post so viewable.
(5) Heartbreak of Psoriasis. 23 July. In this post, I poked a little fun at Huntington’s Kinetic Park research park.
(4) Antidotes to GroupThink: Creative Communities. 21 September. A salute to my good friend Troy Body, who seemed to be a little perturbed that I described him as a “half-bubble off plumb,” a compliment if ever there was one.
(3) Making (Up?) the Grade. 28 September. This post compared and contrasted (mostly the latter) the WVU-Heather Bresch and MU-Emily Perdue academic controversies. I suspect lots of people were curious about whether I thought we were going to have a big scandal. An alternative theory for this post’s popularity: The FBI, which I later accused of overreacting, has been monitoring me closely. I do not dismiss the latter possibility lightly.
(2) Me Talk Football. 25 September. At the prodding of a friend, I poked a little fun at a WVU press release promoting an article about a professor’s research on football brain injuries in Gentlemen’s Quarterly. When HippieKiller referenced my post on his blog, the number of views rose dramatically.
Until one week ago, I would have told you that Me Talk Football was destined to be my most popular post of 2009, but another post slowly-but-surely sneaked up to take the top spot ….
(1) The Libelous World of Higher Education Blogging. 11 November. I don’t know if it was my disclosure that I knew someone had made a lot of false accusations about me behind my back, which produced numerous private emails but not a single public comment, or the story of the poor student sued by an overly sensitive Butler University administration that could not take a little criticism, that made this my most popular post. My guess: it was both.
The first problem, I daresay, is with Vision Shared’s mission: “To bridge social, political and economic gaps by BRINGING PEOPLE TOGETHER to confront the issues and needs facing West Virginia.” I realize that bringing people together, which is better known as event planning or party planning to the uninitiated, can be quite an accomplishment, but it is hardly a “meaningful” accomplishment for an organization in existence for almost a decade. During my eight years working in government, I quickly learned that the problem with getting things done rarely is that key stakeholders don’t meet – the public policy world is filled with party planners. Rather it was that no one ever does much of anything after being brought together. An organization that makes bringing people together its primary mission is destined to fail at accomplishing much of anything else, regardless of whom it brings together.
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