On blogging¶

James Tauber writes on how I view blogging . A good reason to introspect my own blogging routine a bit. I'll use James' points to give it a bit of structure.

• Blog to contribute to your tribe. Most of my blog posts in recent years have been on Python and especially Plone. That's really, as James says, a good way of contributing to the (Plone) community by sharing knowledge. And, yes, I heard the phrase "ah! you're the Reinout who writes that plone blog" at the last two Dutch plone user group meerings. But there's also a definitive contributution to the company I work for as blogging gets me into a habit of writing things down. If I overcome a certain Plone problem, I often blog about it. And a copy of that blog post goes directly into our internal guidelines document directory. So that everyone else sees it (and improves it). The same with my brother's blog who also works for Zest.
• Planetary effects. Yeah, being on planet plone gives you a lot of exposure. There's so much distilled knowledge to be gained by reading planet plone. Following all the relevant mailinglists can be a chore. Keeping up-to-date with planet plone is much more doable. The posts that get me the most comments are those who are practical for your day-to-day plone work (like posts on buildout, agile estimation, firefox addons).
• Why I blog. I have no idea why I started. I like writing and I'm comfortable doing it. I'm an introvert, but somehow I like this extrovert activity. Quite important to me: I use my skills this way. I'm good at writing and summarizing. If you have skills, use them. For instance conference blogging which I've been doing since 2003 .
• How I view blogging as reader. Knowledge gathering. From lots of different angles. From non-mainstream angles. Diversity.
• How I view blogging as writer**. Sharing knowledge freely. See some thoughts from 2004 . Freely you have received: freely give.