A Philosophy of Blogging

Blogging is a relatively new idea. We could argue that it is unprecedented. People kept diaries before, but they were personal. If they ever got published they would likely be heavily edited. Only the Internet allowed you to publish a diary every day – or even every hour – or if you’re a twitterer then all the time.

One of my analyst acquaintances, Jon Collins, leads a dual life, writing IT Analysis pieces and also writing on music (he does rock star biographies). This means that his blog is to some extent “schizophrenic”. I’m similar, in that I write about many things. Until now I’ve only published the IT stuff, but a blog gives me the opportunity to publish it all in some way or other, as long as I structure the blog in a way that isn’t too confusing and caters for that.

So the philosophy of this blog is to publish everything I write that might have an audience. Hell, it’s a grab bag, but I guess that this can work as long as I use the right structure. So here’s the plan that I’m following:

1. Everything I publish will be published as a blog entry, except structural and navigational pages. In that way, anyone can choose to read any posting and it might be about anything. Although most postings will be about IT.
2. The left hand column shows what I want you to think of as the most recent 16 posts.
3. I use the categories (see categories list on the left hand side) to classify every posting in one way or another. That means you can get a list of postings by category, by clicking on these.
4. Some of the navigation tabs at the top of the page also correspond to categories, but they provide a more organized means of getting at content.
5. I can back-date postings, and I do. I back-date any posting that I don’t want to be on the home page. I don’t want postings that are likely to be less popular to be on the home page.
6. I have an extensive back catalog of postings (from IT-Director.com) that I am gradually putting up on the site. I always back-date these when I post them, if they clearly relate to an earlier time. You will thus never know when I put them up as they do not appear on an RSS feed or as a recent post.

I’m hoping that this structure will enable and encourage visitors not just to read the latest post, but also to explore the content on this site. I’m hoping that, in time, the content will become a useful resource for some.