The first blog

As a newcomer to this blogging phenomenon I have some similar feelings to when I went blind for 48 hours for charity (no self-harm was involved, just a sturdy and surprisingly itchy blindfold)... that is, I feel very much at sea, I can hear strands of conversations running past me, some loud, some quiet, some interesting, some not but they all seem a little incoherent and diesmbodied as I cannot yet quite make out their source or their intended end point. I am hoping that by entering the blogging space with blind clumsiness I can learn to open my own eyes to this whole new world of communication. Having read a number of blogs and discussed a few times whether or not this was a good idea with one half of http://adlads.wordpress.com/ and two wholes http://wannabeadman.blogspot.com/ and http://charlesfrith.blogspot.com/ I decided to take a deep breath and go for it. My concern was, and still is to a certain extent that, as a recruiter working within the World of Planning, I generally speak to people brighter, more creative and far more interesting than myself day in day out. Hoping to use this medium as a different way of continuing some of those dialogues, and also as a way of starting some new ones with other Planners, I was worried that I would have nothing to say of note and could be seen as simply as an intruder rather than any sort of contributor.

Well, I've been racking my brains to think of how I might create a point of difference, how I might be able to create a blog that could potentially be worth returning to every now and then... and this is my first answer (for I am not ruling out the possibility of there being more!). Candidates have often commented that they thought as a recruiter in the industry I must have a fascinating view - as an outsider within, involved, interacting but yet completely detached from an industry in the midst of a period of immense change. Watching the processes as old orders and assumptions are being torn up or remoulded and new orders arise, finding their feet and direction. And they are right, it is a fascinating seat to be sat in and one from which I hope to pose some questions of my own and hopefully, to gain some interesting responses from the inhabitants of this world I am permanently visiting.