In the discussions on the Friendster firing, someone noted that i do not blog about my work. I found my nose crinkling and i thought i should explore that.<\/p>\n
In the last 7 years, i have never signed an agreement with any company or organization that forbids me to blog. Or at least, i do not believe that i have. That said, i have often opted not to blog about the work that i do for companies.<\/p>\n
I take contracting gigs in part for the money but in part for the intellectual exercise. I usually respect the companies that i work for and realize that they are working in a competitive market and have hired me to solve a set number of problems, not simply broadcast their strengths and weaknesses to the public.<\/p>\n
There are two types of blog posts i typically make about products: rants and theoretical considerations. I still post the theoretical considerations because it’s often possible to generalize them beyond a particular product.<\/p>\n
The ranting is usually what i stop doing. Rants provide two roles for me. First, they let me vent my frustration. Second, they give me the false hope that i might affect the product somehow remotely. (Note: Friendster paid absolutely no attention to my critiques, thereby dashing this hope.)<\/p>\n
When i work at a company, they give me mechanisms to rant and additional insider knowledge to rant with. Why should i bother to rant to a public unknown audience when i can go straight to the creator’s cube and chew their ear off? The advantage of the public option is to see if others (dis)agree. But seriously, the cube method is far more effective. I think it’s great that people seem to find value from my blog\/rants, but the most noticeable impact to me has always been 1-1 anyone.<\/p>\n
Once i’ve gotten out a rant, i feel no desire to actually re-articulate it for the public. Note: this is why my publication rate has dropped dramatically as my blogging rate has increased… warning for the other academics out there.<\/p>\n
Pay me to speak and i’ll happily craft a theoretical and critical analysis of whatever. But when it comes to blogging, i have no desire to be expected to comment on my work or whatever the latest trend is out there. Nor am i ever remotely amused when people write me emails asking me to comment on their product on my blog or provide free consulting about how to fix some theoretical snaffoo.<\/p>\n
I hate being expected to do things because i’ve done them before. Expectations kill the passion. This blog has been the product of passion for 7 years. I can be convinced to operate without passion when other needs are met (like rent money), but it’s not really my preferred way of living.<\/p>\n
I almost stopped blogging a few months back because i was tired of the expectations. Seriously, if i could give any feedback to readers, it would be lay off, chill the fuck out and don’t expect\/demand things from the writers you’re reading.<\/b> For me (and many of my friends), blogging is an exercise of love, not an effort to meet an audience’s needs. Having to face expectations every time i go to my blog makes me feel absolutely disgusting, like i’ve become some sort of blogging whore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the discussions on the Friendster firing, someone noted that i do not blog about my work. I found my nose crinkling and i thought i should explore that. In the last 7 years, i have never signed an agreement with any company or organization that forbids me to blog. Or at least, i do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zephoria.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}