Thank you for your response. I find it very gracious and courageous, and of great significance to me.

Kind regards

I know this topic is old news, but I’d dare to go out on a limb to offer a different perspective.
I once had the painful experience of commenting on a well known and respected math blogger’s blog. I felt the recent blog of the idividual was unlike the previous ones in the sense that it wasn’t as grounded, practical and in general ‘useful’ as the others – sort of out of touch. I did mention the fact that I read all the others and put those strategies into place in my own classroom and was therefore forever thankful to the individual. I got an extremely snarky reply from the author, whereafter the author posted a snarky tweet, whereupon other ‘bigs’ appluaded her.
I still feel a bit of fear/shame when I intent to comment, and mostly therefore let go of that intent. I know that I have not contributed anything to this community, except for the odd comment or two, so who am I to judge? The tweets also made that quite clear.
I was of course not at the conference, so my inferences may be completely wrong (and please do not hesitate to correct me if they are) but somehow feel the intent of this conference may have been to discuss/ find solutions to these types of problems. Being socially inept most of my life (at school too ‘smart’, ‘weird’ and ‘liberal’ and at university too ‘big-breasted to study teaching’) I may have understood this entire MTboS wrong.

Great pointers in your post, I will definitely return to them once I pluck up the courage to start my own blog.

Thank you for your insights.

These projects have an effect on ourselves, at minimum. They define our character and our ethic. They also have an effect on the people around us in ways that are extremely significant. Strangers tell me at conferences how much the blogosphere has meant to their practice and their happiness. I don’t want to trivialize any of that.

None of that contradicts any idea I was trying to convey earlier. I won’t restate those ideas here because I think they survive a close read.

But I want say that I see how the title of this post, the tone of the first few paragraphs, along with whatever esteem this community has for me has had the cumulative effective of making some of you shocked and defensive, and in no position to give those ideas that close read. I am sorry for that, both because I’ve distracted the conversation from the 90% of this post that I actually care about but especially because I like you guys and your work and would never want you to feel small on my account.