Phase 5: Developing a complex or compound Indetity

At this point you’ve framed out – using a blog and a series of blog entries- part of your identity as based on an activity or activities that support this identity. You’ve accumulated, described, and evaluated a set of key resources (properly referenced!) that situate the activity in a larger community of practice and that help to present your place and role within this community. Finally, you’ve gathered some artifacts that have been produced from your own participation in the activity that support your claims about your role in the community. If you don’t have these in place at this point, you’ll need to do so.

You will then emulate the presentation by Sxip’s Dick Hardt on Identity 2.0, where Hardt’s personal and professional identity were effectively blurred in order to make a sales pitch for his company. In order to create such a compound or complex identity, you will develop a separate blog where your chosen activity and your role in its community of practice are recontextualized with YOU as a marketer. In other words, you now have a sales pitch behind your activities. This sales pitch may be for some product that you endorse or have a stake in, or it may be in terms of marketing your own skills, i.e. YOU as a brand. You may need to rework some of the analysis in your entries to support your “sales pitch” or “brand message”, or you may find the cultural descriptions and criticisms consistent with your role as a marketer.