Almost 4 years ago I posted about my decrease in blogging year over year (Decrease in blogging year over year – is it a problem?) and thought it would be interesting to revisit the subject. For one because I’ve actually blogged more this year than in previous years and because I’ll be moving to a new technology and I suspect blogging will increase.
I’ve know it for quite a while. I’ve learned to live with it. The amount of blogging The Bubble has been decreasing the last few years … mine included. Spending 5 minutes on it I decided to graph my own decreasing activity by year – it’s very obvious then. From an all time high of 343 posts in 2006 (top month ever been June of 2006 with 47 monthly posts!!) to just 58 so far in 2012. For the entire year – a year where I’ve probably been more busy than ever. Quite a fall.
I do realize that we now have new ways of capturing and sharing knowledge and collaboration is now done just as much using Twitter, Facebook, Skype and Stack Overflow but there is something about blogging. The longer form posts lend themselves much better to explaining topics in a thorough and thought through manner. In other words – the Library of the Republic (lending a reference from Mat) needs to be maintained and kept up to date. Back then we had things like Show’n’Tell Thursdays (remember those) and we all blogged nifty LotusScript classes we wrote. We blogged about console commands and compiles. Redims and updalls. What’s happened to all that. In a quiet moment like this I actually miss it. Is it because we all have been with the technology for so long that it no longer necessary? Is it that the breath of the IBM collaboration portfolio has become so wide that it’s by definition impossible to keep up? How about the elevator – how do people new to the technology ascend?
Or am I just becoming an old fart (I’m 36) and just need to shut up and get on with it?
Just completed the Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2010 survey per request via e-mail (and you’re welcome to do the same). I normally have quite mixed opinions about these kinds of surveys but I decided to give it a go and I was quite surprised over my answers. The survey is rather lengthy and goes into a lot of topics which aren’t really relevant for me such as adds, monetizing the blog, measuring traffic and hot topics from 2010 such as the Mexican Oil Spill. The survey also touches on other topics which was more interesting to me such as the amount of blogging, why I blog and stuff like that.
The survey has a whole section on Twitter, whether one uses it and what the purpose is. It also goes right to the heart of microblogging vs. blogging namely that it makes me blog less. Looking at my blogging stats it’s very obvious that microblogging has made me blog less. But when I do blog it’s generally longer than before microblogging. It was quite an eye opener and something that will probably take a little while to digest.
One thing is certain – blogging has become a very prominent way of getting news no matter who niche it may be. Whether it’s about super local politics, whether it’s about what to do for Lotusphere or what the new cloud initiative from IBM is all about. Blogging has changed the way information is delivered and consumed and it’s a better World because of it.
The core Lotus team is now blogging on the official Lotus Knows Blog with Alistair Rennie leading the charge in the first post. I welcome the blog and hope that Alistair will be blogging more frequently than those who went before him (see my “Bob Picciano – please don’t blog like Mike Rhodin!” post).
I don’t see it yet on PlanetLotus but that’s probably just a matter of time.
I too (like Ed) am noticing the explosion of IBM’ers bloggin’ and the explosion of IBM Lotus product blogs. It’s getting hard to follow along on all the subjects!
At the blogger BOF at Lotusphere 2007 a question was asked as to how one keeps up with all the blogs. The first part of the answer is to use a feed reader such as FeedDemon and the other part is to clean up regularly. Since it can be a problem to know which feeds aren’t updating you need some kind of tool. Again FeedDemon comes to the rescue.
I just upgraded to FeedDemon 2.5 Beta 1 for one feature, and one feature alone – the Dinosaur report. I installed the beta over my existing FeedDemon installation and loaded up the report and man have I been waiting for this! The report shows you all the feeds that haven’t been updated in a certain period of time and lets you easily unsubscribe from them. The report can be adjusted to show feeds that haven’t updated in 10, 30, 60, 90 or 120 days. This simple, yet powerful, feature allowed me to quickly unsubscribe from 76 feeds that haven’t been updating in 90 days. Nice!
After going shopping yesterday for new clothes since I still hadn’t received my suitcase I went to the Blogger Annual Lotusphere Dinner at the Brewery on the Boardwalk. I didn’t get to go last year because I got in at 2am on Sunday morning so it was nice being able to go.
For those interested – and to get that out of the way – I did get a new set of very nice clothes. And yes – this was why my outfit was entirely from Oakly! People at the BALD were *very* impressed by that! 😉
Anyways… I sat down next to Tom Duff aka Duffbert as I by chance ended up in the same Mears shuttle from Orlando airport to the Dolphin as he did. I thought it would be a good place to start. At the same table were Julian, jonvon and Warren and Kitty Elsmore. We quickly got to talking so that was nice. Nice beer as well!
We quickly agreed that in a virtual crowd like this it isn’t so much name to face but domain name to face… It’s weird knowing people without recognizing their face. A picture on you blog should be mandatory! For those here at Lotusphere you might want to swing by the session on the IBM blog template by jonvon to see how.
The mingling continued and I got to talk to numerous bloggers there – very nice. Even met Stephan Wissel (wissel.net) who’s here all the way from Singapore. 11 hours difference – wow! He looked surprisingly fresh though.
After a couple of hours I went home to take a shower before going to the ESPN bar at 8pm but I never got there as the jetlag caught up with me. Bummer! Well another lesson learned before next year.
Gotta go get breakfast – more later. The show is about to begin!
P.S.: Did anyone see who scored my two t-shirts?
Stu Downes has an interesting post on the upcoming blogging features of Notes/Domino 7.0.2 and some of the challenges for corporations and it-departments incl. points on Sametime integration, extensibility and security. An intesting read.
lekkimworld.com 