Brian L. Burns — My name is Brian. I’m a copywriter (and a good guy). This is my blog.

Why I’ve Decided To Go To Law School

by brianlburns on 3 December 2010

For those that follow me on Facebook or Twitter know, I have decided to go to law school in Fall of 2011. For those that haven’t heard the news, or want to hear more, I decided I’d write a post describing my thought process and plans.

First, law has long been an interest of mine. I have worked in law firms, studied it in college, and considered applying to law school numerous times before. Though I haven’t written explicitly about the law on this blog, I think you can see evidence of my inclination toward it in detail-oriented grammar and vocabulary posts (such as ones on the correct use of parentheses or the word amenable).

Second, creating a career in the law is very appealing to me. Not only is there honor inherent in some parts of the profession, but it also offers additional training and a sense professional purpose. These are things I have been looking to add for more than a year now, and things I was having trouble creating in my writing and communications world. They certainly exist there, just not for me.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time as a writer, and even more so as the president of the communications firm I started in January of this year. Far from a complete separation of what I do and who I am now, I view law school as an opportunity to build upon the my pre-existing professional foundation, creating something very similar sometime in the future.

I will continue to serve as a writer and service provider through Fall of 2011, and if time permits, in periods throughout my 3+ years as a student. I am hoping SpeakWell Communications will continue to operate during that time, even if I am not at the helm. Naturally, this blog will continue, bolstered by posts about writing, the law, and me as a person.

If you have any questions for me, or any thoughts, I would be thrilled if you left them in the comments section here. If you want me to cut the crap, and get back to writing about writing, give me a suggested post topic and I’ll do my best.

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Why I Use Twitter as my RSS Reader

by brianlburns on 18 March 2010

in RSS, social media, twitter

If you’re like me, you have an RSS Reader (like the one offered by google) that’s overwhelmed with backlogged posts from the many blogs you subscribe to.

If you’re also like me, you don’t bother trying to dig back through your pile of posts, overwhelmed by the shear quantity, and uninspired by the fact that most of them are probably uninteresting or unhelpful for your needs. This is surely a problem.

One solution that I’ve been using with good success is to use my twitter account as my new RSS reader. I’ve found that it’s a good place to easily identify, store, read, and redistribute content.

How it works

Every time I see a link I’m interested in, which is quite often, I favorite that tweet. I don’t bother trying to read them as they come; I’m usually busy doing something else, and just checking in on twitter for a few minutes. Then, once or twice a week during set times, I flip back through my ‘favorited’ tweets, opening all the links I previously earmarked for reading.

Why it works

The people I follow on twitter — those within my online community — usually do a good job selecting out content that I’m interested in, and I find I get a varied and vibrant selection of posts to choose from. Best of all, I’m then able to interact not only with the original author (through the blog comments section), but interact with the person who posted the link (by RT’ing them or saying thanks).

Why it wouldn’t

Granted, I miss a lot using this system, and don’t get a representative sample of the blogosphere (reading only what I happen to catch). But really, with all the blog content that exists out there, could you ever get it all? If you really want to read content from one source, you can always navigate there specifically.

Discussion

I’m curious to hear if anyone else has tried this method, and if so, what their experience was. More broadly, I’d be interested to hear approaches to consuming blog content in general, as to how it improves and informs your profession (or not).

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