Dave Sabol

I’ve always dreamed of seeing the beauty and grandeur of the southern-most continent and my trip last yearto Santiago, Chile would have been the perfect opportunity. I didn’t have the chance/time to make the trip but vowed that I’d visit again, perhaps taking a cruise to enjoy the natural beauty. That was at least until today! It seems a specially designed cruise ship built to withstand the danger of the iceberg infested water met it’s match in Anarctic waters.

Thankfully, nobody was injured. Amazing that although we are as technologically advanced as we are, mother nature still has a few tricks up her sleeve.

Is it really possible to separate the personal from the professional? I have been struggling with this issue for the past few months both in my daily life as well as my blogging. What follows is a description of the struggle and explanation of why I ultimately have decided to start a new blog (Associated Knowledge) to serve as my public speaking venue and focusing this blog on my personal / family life. For those of you who have bookmarked Nomadic Learning, I would appreciate it if you could change your bookmark to http://www.associatedknowledge.com and update your RSS feeds as well. Please read on for more details.

Many of you have come to know me through my Nomadic Learning blog. Initially I had intended to use it as a way to share my thoughts surrounding life, my family and my travels. I also figured that while I was at it, I could use it as a portfolio to showcase some of my work and technology related experiments. For almost 9-months that is exactly how I kept it and it wasn’t until I attended the ASAE Technology Conference in February of this year that things started to change.

It was at that point that I not only found additional topics to write about, but I also discovered a network of like-minded individuals (The Association Blogoclump) who were also interested in similar topics and were passionate about sharing their thoughts. At that point I tried to maintain my blog as dual-purpose, but I quickly realized that similar to my actual life, separating what is personal from professional online is not an easy thing to do.

I really do love my family and know that there is more than enough material that I could share in a blog format. My family and I have the opportunity to do a lot of really fun things together. And with a toddler in the house, there is never a shortage of activity to write about and share pictures of. However, I am also extremely passionate about the association that I work for, the work that I do, and talking about the intersection of technology, learning and associations. While I am not able to discuss many of the specifics of my day-to-day work, I have been able to share my thoughts, ideas, opinions and experiences in more of a general manner pretty regularly since I started blogging about it.

A few weeks ago, my son and I accompanied my wife on a trip to a conference in Detroit she was attending. It was at that point when I realized the true challenge of blogging about professional activities and personal life in the same venue. During the time that we spent in Detroit my son and I made many memories (visiting Comerica Park and Ford Field, attending the Detroit Autorama, etc.) but I really didn’t feel it was appropriate the share those pictures with folks who read my blog for thoughts and ideas related to technology and associations.

Shortly after I returned from the trip, I put a considerable amount of time and energy into rethinking my entire blogging strategy. Could I separate my personal life and professional life and still have enough energy and enthusiasm to write about both, while giving 100% to my family and my job? How would the separate impact (positive or negative) those who have become regular readers? Would I lose the results of all of the work I have put into building and establishing my blog as a source of relevant, reliable and hopefully mildly informative and entertaining materials? What do I do with all of the legacy content related to one blog but not the other. Could I make the transition seamless? Was this the beginning of the end or just a new beginning?
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