At the CSTD conference in Halifax last week, a woman asked how anyone can keep up with the various channels I'd been talking about. (I may have frightened her by displaying my feed reader, on which the "learning" tab had over 400 unread items.)

I don't recall what I said, but on reading your post, I recall a line I saw in the Whole Earth Catalog: "take what you can use, and let the rest go by."

To me, what that really means is to pay attention to what's going on around you, but to adapt that to your own interests and needs.

I've barely read any blogs, and even few Twitter posts, these last few weeks; a large client project has occupied virtually all my time. That's just what's going on at the moment, the way that when you're repainting the house, you don't take a lot of phone calls.

I spoke recently with Ben Gardner of Pfizer UK (he was involved with the "Meet Jessica" slideshow. Jessica's connections lean toward the internal, in part because of the company's infrastructure, but I don't think they'll stay that way.