A few years ago I was part of a really special group of people. We were special because we had sacred knowledge and it we were charged with the sacred duty to share the good news with everyone we met.

And share we did. Despite the naysayers and the knockers we kept on spreading our version of the truth. We rejoiced when people listened and converted themselves to our particular doctrine. We were saddened when people didn’t listen to our words, but that was OK because we knew that was the way that it was going to be and they needed to be weeded out anyway.

We regularly got together and held gatherings attended by people from all over New Zealand. It was really exciting when we had a speaker from overseas. One of our conferences would keep us going for months as we remembered and recounted all the wonderful speakers we had heard and presentations that we had attended.

Some of the people in our group struggled more than other people. For some it was because they had more than their fair share of trials and tribulations. We surrounded these people with love and encouraged them to spend more time inside our group where we could protect them from the vicious wolves who were just waiting for them to let down their guard.

Other people suffered because they didn’t Do Things The Right Way. They hung out on the edge of the group and occasionally strayed beyond the safety net of the organisation. Those of us who were good group members always struggled with our response to these people. They preferred to be individuals and associating with them could cause us to question our faith which could lead to us falling away from what the group knew was right. On the other hand, it was our sacred duty to warn these individuals of the folly of their course … And if they didn’t listen and fell away, we knew that it was for the best because they weren’t the right sort of people anyway.

There is a large portion of my life that I look back upon with a sense of disbelief. How could I have ever been so gullible? How could millions of other people be so gullible?

It’s actually really easy and it’s coming really soon right now to a group near you.

Last week someone called me a hopeless optimist. That hit home because I truly do want to believe in the power of something. There is a huge group of singing and waving educators out there who are speaking in the tongue of Web 2.0. I’d love to be right in the middle of them with my del.icio.us tags, Flickr photos and Elgg blog tucked into my conference bag.

But I can’t because I need to stand safely on the edge. It’s a wonderful thing to belong to a group, to hold common views and values and to be able to celebrate and share. But only when you actually fully agree. And I don’t think that Web 2.0 is the answer to all that ails us.
Artichoke calls it Blogger Frottage. I don’t have her way with words but I do know how to spot a problem when I see it.

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