My conversation with Paul Bausch

Hi there,
Yesterday (August 16th) I had lunch with Paul Bausch. Paul is one of the original co-developers of Blogger and has a number of very cool projects underway. He's published one O'Reilly Hacks books and just finished another. Paul has a cool site (www.onfocus.com) and also has a wonderful public service project, ORBlogs. ORBlogs is a directory of blogs published in Oregon.

I learned about Paul by accident last year, when someone at Powell's asked me to be on a panel about blogs with him. This surprised and amused me since especially at that time I knew next to nothing about blogs--and am still very much a neophyte. (It turns out that the person who asked me knew that I had reviewed Laura Gurak et al's Into the Blogosphere and assumed that I knew more than I did.)

At any rate, this serendipitous accident had the great benefit of letting me know that Paul lives in Corvallis. Last summer and throughout the year, Paul has been extremely generous in sharing his time and responding to my (often naive and uninformed) questions. I will always be grateful for his patience and for his support.

Yesterday Paul took the time to respond to one of the questions that I asked in my ISHR paper (previously posted on this site). The question was this: What motivates someone to write the 1283rd review of Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible.

I thought that Paul's response was both thoughtful and thought-provoking, so I was pleased when he posted it on his blog. To read Paul's response to my question, go to:

http://www.onfocus.com/2005/08/3725

You'll really enjoy reading Paul's thoughtful analysis.