Webium

Webium/PHILOSOPHY

July 19 – I am doing something I've wanted to do for ten years: Establish a Web presence that integrates all my ideas and interests into one place. Almost from the beginning of my first attempts at building Web pages, I've wanted to be "whole" on the Internet. Even since my days at Angelfire (and yes, those pages still exist, but I can no longer log in!), I've wanted everything to cascade down from one central site.

In 2007, it's happening.

It took some words from my pastor to help this come together. He spoke about integrity, and what that means (don't worry; I won't start preaching at you!):

Integrity comes from the same word as integer, which means a whole number. Dr. Keller pointed out that a person works best as a whole person, rather than splitting himself up, showing one side to one person, but hiding parts of himself. This sort of person behaves differently around different groups of friends. And his friends from one part of his life don't know his friends from the rest of his life. The person is broken, or fractured (like the word fraction). This is a person without integrity.

Sort of like Relationship George and Independent George.

So what does this have to do with my "emerging publishing philosophy"?

If you visit my main page, www.paulklenk.us, you will see that while I segregate my blogging into specialty sites (humor, faith, career, politics), I link them all back to paulklenk.us, my umbrella site.

Here's an example: Until recently, I haven't had a site truly dedicated to my interest in the Internet and Web publishing. But my interest is very strong; lately I've been blogging on the main site on this subject. And I expect to do more.

So today I created this new segregated site, Webium, where I will focus purely on the Web. When I publish something here that may interest my entire audience, I can reference it briefly on The Front Page of my home site, the page with highlights of my work that week, with links to items of interest.

When I am working with online communities with the same interest, like Blogcrowds, I can go by the handle Webium and link my profile here. This can be my Internet sandbox. If someone from that community wants to know me better, more fully, they can click on up to paulklenk.us and get an integrated picture of my life.

One positive result to this practice is that I'm behaving myself on the Internet. I'm more civil, more polite, use my time more wisely and productively, and waste it less and less on trival issues, negativity, or people who bring me down. I have to, because anywhere I register an identity, that identity can eventually be traced back to my whole person, my complete identity. I think twice before posting. And when I do decide to post at length, or in depth, I do it at one of my own pages first, then link to it instead of dumping it all on someone else's site.

I've always wanted to do this, but I lacked the tools and skills, and was always overwhelmed. Simply, I had far too much to say to get everything organized in a short period.

Now that I've learned to set up a blog that looks good and functions well, I have been able to set up my specialty blogs, one by one, covering my strong interests. The vessel is constructed.

Now all I have to do is start filling it. And that's easy to do, because there's a lot of me.

– Paul Klenk, Webium