Tech IT Easy » Editorial

The value of Twitter vs. the value of Facebook vs. the value of having Neither [weekend ramblings]

Vincent van Wylick — Fri, 14 May 2010 20:17:31 +0000

I think a value should always be weighed against the value of not having it, particularly when it’s hard to put a numerical value on something. This something is clearly Facebook and even more clearly Twitter, which still doesn’t compute for 100%. Why I love Twitter would be like saying why I love my dog or my Bengalese tiger, it’s hard to place a value on love. Not to say that I love Twitter, but there are few things that bother me about it. I tolerate it and it has nestled in a comfortable (but small) place in my life.

There are again ramblings against the status quo, or rather the status pecunia—the status of wealth. A few years ago, it was Twitter which seemed to show the Fail Whale more often then the “what are you doing now?” page. It lead to Friendfeed and various other me-too services that were dropped as soon as Twitter got its act together. There are again ramblings about evicting Facebook from people’s lives, though I’m here to tell you that if you want to have any kind of social life online, you’re probably better of keeping that account, though perhaps with less naked pictures or whatever you are worried about losing.

The value of Facebook is that it allows for richer connections between people that do not see each other every day. I care for my high-school friends that live in the UK, France, or Brazil, but since I can’t see them everyday, it adds value to my life to know that they are getting a kid or getting married. It does not add value to my life if people choose to leave Facebook, like some of my friends did at first when they were overwhelmed by all this publicity (something blogging prepares you for). And I’m really glad Facebook doesn’t delete accounts permanently as when people change their mind (they usually do), their friends are again there waiting for them (life is too exhausting to be-/de-/re-friend friends like most of the internet forces you to do).

The value of Twitter is like that morning coffee that adds a little (but not everything) to the quality of the moment you’re experiencing. No, NO, let’s not equate the value like that. The biggest value of Twitter to me is actually pretty much the same one as Facebook’s. I met up with a friend in Denmark a few weeks ago, who is also on Twitter, and I was able to finish his sentences because I read about his experiences ON Twitter. To me Twitter is more like a Second Life than Secondlife(tm) is. It allows for quick streams about people you care about or you “follow” because you respect them. If I had intelligent displays running Twitter on my sunglasses, I would wear them all the time while walking through life, that is how second life Twitter has become to (some of) my relationships. My business partner is going to China this week and I would love for him to update his Twitter-account while there to keep me informed of the cool stuff he’s researching for us (mobile operators better start catching up to this dynamic).

So, what, WHAT, could possibly be the value of Neither? Such a leading way to pose that question, as I’m clearly not on that side of the fence. I’m sorry that many of my friends decide against Twitter accounts because they don’t see the value of it. Those are usually the people that I see once every 6 months and our conversations are less deep because, well, we still have to get through the superficiality of “how was your day? What are you up to?” Questions that Twitter & Facebook both ask. And I’m sorry if my friends decide not to use Facebook as it not only allows them to post their thoughts, but pictures of their Bengalese tigers or their latest trip to hell, and even status updates about Farmville, which I previously stated, was an imperfect way of showing of your virtual garden to your friends.

The value of Neither is a type of emptiness that may be good for meditation, but it is no longer how the world works. It’s like seeing my parents struggle with emails or internet banking when no one sends snailmail or goes to a physical bank anymore. The world without Facebook or Twitter no longer exists. I don’t care about privacy issue 1 or 0, because it’s really your business what you put on the internet and what you don’t and you should never put stuff on there that you don’t want people to know about. I care about connections and about the empowerment that they bring to interpersonal relationships.

I have met 80 people on Facebook that I never expected to see again after graduating from high school, from university, or from leaving the coolest job I had as a tween. I am so grateful to the site for that that if Zuck were here, I could kiss him. Facebook isn’t perfect, and we should protest against these imperfections until they are fixed. Whether we should leave social networks and abandon all the possibilities they have brought us, that is like starving yourself in protest against war: Nobody cares!

This post was brought to you by TigersInPoolsHellYES. Donate via the paypal button on the right.

Why I look down on coding (and why I’m completely wrong about it)

Vincent van Wylick — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:24:41 +0000

I live in a funny world. My company, which is composed of several disciplines in the manufacturing, industrial design, and, yes, programming space, is one factor. I sometimes see people screw together contraptions in our workshop, and I see coders banging away at their PCs and Macs, and I wonder what the hell I am thinking calling programming low or high tech. There are different degrees to everything and just like metal and a few screws can lead to an amazing creation, so lines of code produces the amazing virtual reality I interact with most of my days.

This will be a short post. I think that the Internet has proven to be a two sided coin. It brought us freedom of information, but bits are also information, which makes it hard to gain value from them. Looking at it through a business lens (a flaw of mine) I can’t help but wonder if programming is a worthwhile direction to take, if you want to make money at least.

The other side is what I wrote about in paragraph one. Code produces wonderful things and I am grateful everyday for the fruits of that labour. So I sincerely hope that my world, the business world, will continue to allow for “the code” to reign free, and for those that produce code and its products, to reap the rewards and continue to do what they love.

So I apologise for whatever I wrote previously, namely that software is not high-tech, i.e. innovative, because it simply does not apply to all code (just to the 100s of 1000s of me-too apps and websites out there, which ruin it for the good ones).

This post was inspired by Fred Wilson’s post “Code As Craft” and by one of our interns producing “beautiful code.”

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Please welcome Anand Kishore Raju, a new blogger on Tech IT Easy !!!

Vincent van Wylick — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 13:20:14 +0000

Dear everyone,

I am extremely happy to start off this new year by introducing a fresh face on Tech IT Easy, Anand Kishore Raju, who will be blogging with us in 2010. His main areas of focus as a blogger will be greening the internet, carbon footprints, energy and power figures of the internet and web2.0.

Anand is currently working as a Research Engineer at Telecom ParisTech (ENST). His area of research focuses on the Energy aspects of the Internet, what the scientific community calls “Green Networking”. His efforts are directed towards making Computer Network Science aware that processing, moving and storing bits has a cost in terms of energy and in terms of the Carbon Emission Footprint.

In the past, Anand had also worked at Collaborative Systems Group (ColSys) at Bilkent University, Turkey, where he developed a taxonomy for user properties, influence factors for feedback quality in web 2.0, existing and novel models for deviation types and their detection. He also holds a degree in Computer Science and Engineering and aspires to join HEC in near future.

Anand joins a smart team of collaborators, some of which also work in green computing and many of which share an interest in this important topic for sure. As such, please join us in welcoming Anand to the team and I hope you enjoy reading his words on Tech IT Easy!

Happy New Year,

The Tech IT Easy team

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Christmas Address

Vincent van Wylick — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 11:40:11 +0000

As formal as Address sounds, it’s not meant to be. Just a small reminder that we are still here, more exemplified perhaps by the inverted correlation between blogging and doing great things (P.S. Many of us can be followed on Twitter, which doesn’t appear to have that problem).

Yes, we have all been busy doing things like moving to different countries and continents, starting companies, starting and changing jobs. I think Cecil is even well on his way to becoming a e2.0 authority, and judging by Fidji Simo’s tweets, I think she’s developing herself into an expert in retail—on-, off-, and hybrid forms. And that is amazing news and exactly what I always wanted from Tech IT Easy—a “workforce” that is productive outside of Tech IT Easy and contributes to its members’ lives on- and offline as well.

Which is why I still encourage anyone interested in technology and its commercialisation to join us, to develop and contribute their thoughts and expertise!

All that aside, what more can I wish for our readers and bloggers on this Christmas day? For one, I wish for a better 2010 and I am 100% certain that it will be. We all got a little roughed up in 2009, but what doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger! The Internet Boom & Bust… pah, I laugh at its impact: it lead to Le infamous nouveau Web, aka Web 2.0, aka the one where 37Signals had to remind us of the revolutionary idea of charging $$$ for products. I also laugh at Enron, as all its promised consequences of accountability haven’t affected the upper-tier of management one bit (and maybe never will).

But I don’t laugh at what is happening today, I’m happy about it. Between the magnificent state’ification of banks, the “new/old” lean approach to doing all business, and the threat of global warming, it’s another warning shot at us, the complacent human race who thought they had it all under control again. The world isn’t perfect and I hope that every one of those bumps bring us closer to making it better.

All cynicism aside, we live in a time where information is at our fingertips, where collaborative filtering and neuroscience help us better filter the relevant stuff to the top, where we can still publish news at a click, which is still an amazing concept, and where we all have GPS in our hands today, and augmented reality in our hands tomorrow. Yay, the innovative mind and yay, it’s practical outcomes!

Merry Christmas everyone and if you don’t hear from us before the 31st of December, have a great transition into the new year!

Love,

Your Tech IT Easy team:
Alex, Jeremy, Steve, Fidji, Georgia, Cecil, Vincent, Kari, Manu, Lucien, Matthias, Raj, Raphael, and Remy

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A short story about Phil

Kari Silvennoinen — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 06:59:20 +0000

On my trip to Africa the most inspiring thing that happened to me happened on my last day, on the Nairobi international airport.

It was still couple of hours before the flight would start to board but we were already at the gate. And next to us was sitting Phil. I don’t know if he’s name is really Phil, I just think he looked like a Phil. Now, Phil was a huge, white, bald, old guy with diabetes and thick glasses. Really huge. He was wearing a traditional Kenyan suit/robe-thing. He looked like a fat white Masai. He was dozing off and told people around him that they should feel free to wake him up if he started to snore. He wouldn’t mind.

Phil really was a Buddha. He was out there. I don’t know if he knows it.

One thing lead to another and Phil started to tell why he was in Kenya. I don’t think he has ever been to any other country.

Phil’s from Virginia, USA. He’s a schoolteacher.

I don’t remember all the details correctly, but that’s okay, because the details don’t matter. You see, Phil’s dad had some money, but he was in a home. Got MS. Now, being a good Christian, he had donated a bunch of money to missionaries to build a church in Africa. Church of Nazarene. Now, Phil was a good son and visited his father now and then. His dad was a bit sad about there being a church after him somewhere in Africa and he was there in a nursing home on the other side of the world. So, naturally, Phil goes and says “Gee, dad, if I could just go there and take pictures for you, I would.” So, his dad takes out his check book and asks “Would you? Here’s some money, it should cover your tickets?”. Here Phil said, “Who was I say to my dad no?”

So, Phil got himself a passport and stuff. He only knew that the church was somewhere in Kenya and that it was called Church of Nazarene. And that he knows no-one there but has booked a trip over the weekend to Kenya. Someone might think Phil was either simple or just insane, but, I don’t think that. He was just this unassuming guy.

At some point during his story, another flight arrived and people started to come in through the doors of our gate. There, sitting on an airport’s plastic seat, around 9pm in the evening, with the red robe on, this guy starts to greet all the people going past him, “Welcome to Kenya, hope you have a nice stay”. Most of the people don’t even blink in his general direction. Some say thanks. Some smile. But I bet most of them felt at least something. So what if you can’t please all the people who just don’t care when you can make some people feel a bit better?

So, anyway. A day before he’s leaving he gets an e-mail from some missionary that yeah, the church exists and they can take him there. So, he goes to Kenya, gets on a jeep, takes out his digital compact and starts taking a lot of pictures of the church and gets back to USA to go back to work on Monday.

So, he goes to visit his dad again with hundreds of pictures and he’s dad’s all excited – doesn’t even look at the pictures. He almost pushes the pictures away and asks “Do you wanna go over there again?” And, again, who’s Phil to say no?

“At this point I realize that I’m going visit that church every year for the rest of his life.” So he does. Phil’s not that into the whole Church of Nazarene thing, he’s a schoolteacher. So, this one time he asks if he could visit a jail in Kenya. Normally this would be totally impossible, but as it happens, there just happens to be this guy who’s the head priest of all prisons around there or something. And well, at this point Phil’s been there for some years already so he has some street cred.

I didn’t ask, but I guess his dad’s passed away since I understood he doesn’t visit the church anymore. He still visits Kenya every year for a weekend and goes to visit the prisoners.

To drive the point home: This guy takes a long-haul flight every year at the same time, for a weekend, to visit these guys. And these guys wait him like he’s Santa Claus. And to them, he is, the original.

I guess these guys don’t get much visitors and I’ve no idea who they think Phil is back home, I don’t think Phil has any idea who they think he is. But they write to him. Last year, the prisoners asked if Phil could get them a electric piano. Now, hauling something like that from USA would be impossible, so he just arranged the piano there otherwise. These guys don’t have even clean water or anything, and they ask for a electric piano and this guy delivers. He knows that there’s a very small chance that these guys actually get to use whatever things he can procure for them, but I guess it’s the gesture that counts. Someone actually cares.

Coming back to the robe. It’s not Phil’s first, and not his last. The prisoners make them for him. This year, a tailor took a measures of Phil so they can make a new one for him when he comes to visit next year. Again, these guys who are living in conditions I can’t even imagine are making these robes for this one guy who comes and visits them every year.

Now, Phil says he’s ready to die. He says it’s really great to know that you’re ready to go. This is not exactly something I look forward to hear before a 8 hour flight, but he might have a point. I’m not ready to go. Phil has had an heart attack and he tells how excited it was to be transported to ER by a helicopter. Phil said he’s on VA so it was all covered.

I told Phil that for the sake of the prisoners, I really wish that he makes it next year.

There, on Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, among all the people, mostly young western tourists going to volunteer to build whatever and who were there to save the world, was unassuming Phil who no-one took seriously. I shook his hand and thanked him for being a human.

–

Phil also told when he got his heart attack and a doctor came to see if he had got all the necessary medications, the nurse would go that yes, except for one that’s barcode didn’t register into the system. The doctor then took the medication and gave it to Phil noting to the nurse that the needs of the patient went before some accounting system.

Thinking that this guy wouldn’t have been there telling me how he gives hope to more people ever year than I ever will because of a nurse wouldn’t give some stuff to save his life because she couldn’t register the stuff into a system is something that really scares me.

–

It’s wrong to say Phil said he gives hope to people. He never said that. He just told what he does and how he ended up doing that. I got the impression that the people who he teaches don’t know what he does over a certain weekend in September. Why he keeps doing that, he never said.

–

I honestly don’t remember all the details correctly. I wrote this to tell you about Phil, but this is best read as a fictional short story. I decided to wait for some time before writing this down so I could think the whole story over and better distill it to the point that there are way too few Phils around. Why I decided to publish it is mostly due to [this](http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/169873399/clackity-noise)

On my trip to Africa the most inspiring thing that happened to me happened on my last day, on the Nairobi international airport. This post isn’t about technology, but about globalization and, well, maybe in a small way how technology is only an enabler, it just has made things easier – but it doesn’t do things for us.

It was still couple of hours before the flight would start to board but we were already at the gate. And sitting next to us was Phil. I don’t remember if his name was really Phil, I just think he looked like a Phil. Now, Phil was a huge, white, bald, old guy with diabetes and thick glasses. Really huge. He was wearing a traditional Kenyan suit/robe-thing. He looked like a fat white Masai. He was dozing off and told people around him that they should feel free to wake him up if he started to snore. He wouldn’t mind.

Phil really was a Buddha. He was out there. I don’t know if he knows it.

One thing lead to another and Phil started to tell why he was in Kenya. I don’t think he has ever been to any other country. Phil’s from Virginia, USA. He’s a schoolteacher.

So, Phil got himself a passport and all the other stuff. He only knew that the church was somewhere in Kenya and that it was called Church of Nazarene. And that he knows no-one there but that didn’t stop him from booking a trip over the weekend to Kenya. Someone might think Phil was either simple or just insane, but, I don’t think that. He was just this unassuming guy.

Back in US, he goes to visit his dad with hundreds of pictures and he’s dad’s all excited – but he doesn’t even look at the pictures. He almost pushes the pictures away and asks “Do you wanna go over there again?” And, again, who’s Phil to say no?

“At this point I realize that I’m going visit that church every year for the rest of his life.” And so he does. Phil’s not that into the whole Church of Nazarene thing, he’s a schoolteacher. So, this one time he asks if he could visit a jail in Kenya. Normally this would be totally impossible, but as it happens, there just happens to be this guy who’s the head priest of all prisons there in the group. And well, at this point Phil’s been there for some years already so he has some street cred and the doors to the jails are open for Phil.

I totally forget if we wanted to teach these guys something or if it was something else, but anyway, Phil’s visit is a success. He starts to visit the prisoners in addition to going to see how his dad’s church is holding up, all this in over a weekend. Many years pass. I didn’t ask, but I guess his dad’s passed away since I understood he doesn’t visit the church anymore. He still visits Kenya every year for a weekend and goes to visit the prisoners.

I guess these prisoners don’t get much visitors and I’ve no idea who they think Phil is back home, I don’t think Phil has any idea who they think he is. But they write to him. Last year, the prisoners asked if Phil could get them a electric piano. Now, hauling something like that from USA would be impossible and expensive, so he just arranged the piano there otherwise. These guys don’t have even clean water or anything, and they ask for a electric piano and this guy delivers. He knows that there’s a very small chance that these guys actually get to use whatever things he can procure for them, but I guess it’s the gesture that counts. Someone actually cares.

Coming back to the robe Phil is wearing. It’s not Phil’s first, and not his last. The prisoners make them for him. This year, a tailor took a measures of Phil so they can make a new one for him when he comes to visit next year. Again, these guys who are living in conditions I can’t even imagine are making these robes for this one guy who comes and visits them every year.

I told Phil that for the sake of the prisoners, I really wish that he makes it next year.

There, on Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, among all the people coming and going, mostly young western tourists going to volunteer to build something and who are there to naively save the world, was unassuming Phil who no-one took seriously. I shook his hand and thanked him for being a human.

–
Phil also told when he got his heart attack at home and somehow made it to the hospital, a doctor came to see if he had got all the necessary medications. A nurse would go that yes, except for one that’s barcode didn’t register into the system. The doctor then took the medication and gave it to Phil noting to the nurse that the needs of the patient went before some accounting system.

–
It’s wrong to say Phil said he gives hope to people. He never said that. He just told what he does and how he ended up doing that. I got the impression that the people who he teaches don’t know what he does over a certain weekend in September. Why he keeps doing that, he never said.

–
I honestly don’t remember all the details correctly. I wrote this to tell you about Phil. I decided to wait for some time before writing this down so I could think the whole story over and better distill it to the point that there are way too few Phils around and too many people to whom Phil is a lifeline.

Why I decided to publish it is also in some part due to this post.

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Proposing a Paul Graham style blogging model

Vincent van Wylick — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:09:36 +0000

We’re all stupid busy and it sucks. Tech IT Easy was started under the guise of studenthood which does not in any real way reflect “professionalhood.” 10-hour days are not uncommon in my line of work and it doesn’t leave much space for reflection–the real currency of writing.

So here’s what I propose.

form a group of tech/business enthousiasts (aka regular readers)
find a platform (e.g. mail, but I also favour the private wiki where texts can be shared privately and easily edited)
share ideas for blog posts and drafts and discuss those internally
release, not often, but qualitatively good pieces on technology / business / etc.

Why do I call this the Paul Graham model. Take a look at his essays. Under some of them (e.g. the Ramen profitasble essay), there’s a thank you to people that helped him edit the piece.

I’d like to hear your thoughts. If you’re interested in collaborating, either publicly or anonymously, and/or happen to know a good platform to do this on, leave a comment or send us a mail.

Thanks,
Vincent

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The State of Things

Vincent van Wylick — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:19:25 +0000

This is a message just regarding the state of affairs for Vincent van Wylick and no one else.

On my last blog, on food & retail, I ended with a conclusion as I don’t like long silences and having people guess what’s going on.

The short answer to that is that I will be taking an extended leave of writing for Tech IT Easy as I currently have other professional and private matters to focus on. My definition of extended leave is not that I will no longer write, just that I will write when there’s time and inspiration, but no longer on a daily schedule.

I still very much love to put my thoughts to paper, so expect a post whenever the mood hits me. For the rest, I don’t speak for anyone else on Tech IT Easy, all of whom are busy as well, and I sincerely hope that they too will find it within themselves to keep you (and me) updated on their thought progression when they find the time.

Vincent out

I’d say, thanks for all the fish, but instead I’ll leave you with the most amazing video of fish I’ve ever seen.

Kuroshio Sea – 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world – (song is Please don’t go by Barcelona) from Jon Rawlinson on Vimeo.

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The Dynamics of Blogging and the Dynamics of Doing Business

Vincent van Wylick — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 10:05:07 +0000

I hate breaks in anything I do, blogging, work, sports, love, etc., because it’s always harder to return back into the zone. Similarly, I already knew subconsciously that it would be hard to return back to blogging after the proposed hiatus. Routines are good and when they are moved aside, they get replaced by something else.

The human body is a machine and everything, from hours in the day, to food and exercise, to making money, to relationships, are all pieces in the machine of life. There’s only so many hours in the day is a well-familiar phrase to most of us and reflects the difficulty in balancing different activities and responsibilities, with some just falling off the map.

I am not saying that I plan to stop blogging, but I do think that we all need to make choices in our lives which will affect other, previous ones, like domino blocks.

Dynamics…

I just bookmarked a blog post on delicious on forming sales teams in a startup. It’s a good one and you should all read it. As I tagged and bookmarked however, I immediately thought, hey, I’m pretty sure no one on my company will read it. Why? Maybe because we already figured it out… Maybe because we figure stuff out as we are doing it… Your choice.

Blogging or any kind of writing for public purposes brings several complications to business people:

it is public knowledge, meaning that the competitive advantages are slim: I don’t think this is a major factor, as most innovations are combinations of different ingredients that may or may not be public knowledge. Great artists steal, as they say.
Writing is processed explicit knowledge from something that was previously implicit and needs to be made implicit again by the reader for it to be useful in a practical context: I’ve written about the knowledge-generating company and the knowledge spiral twice before. Another phrase, “You can’t help yourself, because your *self* sucks!” also comes to mind.

It’s the latter that represents the greatest challenge to authors and consumers of their work. I’ve also previously written about the benefit of formal education, which, I think, tries to recreate the knowledge spiral, turning explicit knowledge into the implicit kind, to be used by students in their work later on.

The dynamics of business is that there are expenses—YOU, the team, the office, etc.—which need to be recuperated by your work—the work you do for customers, after which they pay you. It leaves very little time for reflection, e.g. through blogging, etc., and for making things explicit, e.g. through blogging, etc.

I’m still a big fan of Michael Gerber’s E-myth revisited, which is really about writing that franchise manual for your business, so you can both understand the processes happening in your company, and expand on those, by more easily passing on knowledge. It’s Taylorism, of course, or Scientific Management, or any of the other management methodologies that followed in the past century.

But these activities require time, time which people inside organisations usually do not have, and hence prefer to outsource to outside consultants, who then need to make their knowledge explicit and again implicit in the minds and methods of their clients’ organisation.

It’s a real nightmare for people (like me) who think to much and always aim for something higher. And who want to blog. And who want to do good business…

Thoughts?
Vincent

(Picture courtesy of Fisica & Psychica)

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Migrating from WordPress.com to your own

Kari Silvennoinen — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:53:46 +0000

Like some of you might know or notice, we recently moved from WordPress.com’s blog hosting to our self-hosted version (for hardcore fans, this is the second time this blog has moved). As good web citizens, we here at Tech IT Easy believe in sharing information, so here’s how we did our migration.

Moving over the WordPress content

There are couple of issues we hit during the migration, and might be good to know for anyone who plans to do the same. Many Google searches were used and multiple blog posts were read in order for our migration to happen, so hopefully this summary makes it easier for future generations…

Preparing for the migration

Our blog had its own domain name already on WP, so one thing to keep in mind is that you need to update the nameserver records from wordpress’s to whoever you’re planning to host your site. However, this is the last thing you will do. Just make sure you have access (or you know how to contact the right guy) to change the nameservers.

Install WordPress

Next, install WordPress on your new host. For example, we initially installed it at techiteasy.webfactional.com. Many hosts allow you to do 1-click style of installs with takes much of the pain away.

Copy the settings over from your wordpress.com blog as well as you can to your new. Make sure you keep the same permalink structure. Do set your blog URLs to your temporary URL instead (in our case, techiteasy.webfactional.com).

Don’t get fancy just yet, but just go with the admin account. We’ll get to user accounts later.

Install plug-ins and themes

Another thing to note when hosting your own blog is that you’re now responsible for security issues in your blog. This means that there are couple of plug-ins you’ll need to install. If you allow user-registrations, you really need the WP-reCAPTCHA -plugin. Also remember to set-up the Akismet-plugin with your WordPress.com user account API code.

On some hosts WordPress’s normal way of sending e-mail doesn’t work (like at our webhost, Webfaction) and you need to install Configure SMTP-plugin instead. Also, if you want to keep your experience similar to what you had at WP.com, be sure to install WordPress.com Stats and Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Some other plugins you might want to consider are Google Analyticator (If you’re into Google Analytics), Google XML Sitemaps and WP Super Cache.

Back-up WordPress.com

First of all, do a backup of your blog at wordpress.com. Don’t worry about images or other content, they’ll join your post texts when you’ll import the backup to your new blog later.

It probably goes without saying that all content that arrives to your blog after this point isn’t in the backup, so you might want to do this when it’s quiet in your blog and afterwards remember to manually add all the “missed” content.

Import backup

Our back-up file was about 12 megs in size, which turned out to be a problem because you need to upload the backup using WordPress’s web admin panel. Some web hosts will allow you to override PHP’s maximum file upload and script execution times (default is 2 MB), but some don’t (In WordPress’s Restore page you’ll see what is the effective limit). Even though we did increase both limits, uploading the 12 MB backup didn’t work. At this point I did wonder what use is a back-up you can’t restore.

Your best (and almost only) way to work-around this is to split the XML file into smaller chunks. You need to retain the headers and footers in each chunk, but otherwise it’s quite straight-forward.

You probably want to change to the new site pretty quickly after importing, so you might want to do some of the tune-ups mentioned here only later. What you really should do now is to now check that the URLs you care about look the same in your new site as they do in the old one (fe. www.techiteasy.org/2008/09/01/random-post and techiteasy.webfactional.com/2008/09/01/random-post).

Fix user accounts

At least for us, user accounts did not transfer smoothly over. First of all, the usernames are wrong and you probably can’t login with them. On top of that, your author links are probably screwed on the new blog. To fix these, you need to do some SQL to fix the entries in database. This isn’t a clean solution, but so far seems to have worked for us.

The easiest way is to create a new account with the same username you have at WP.com and then transfer all the “old” account’s posts to you (and then delete that old account). This takes care of the author URL’s to remain same as previously.You can transfer the posts to your new account by noting your new and old account IDs in the wp_users table and then doing UPDATE wp_posts SET post_author = WHERE post_author = . You can check from WP’s admin panel that your new account should have all your posts and the old account should have zero. You can now delete the old account.

If you want to have another username, you need to change the user_nicename field in wp_users table to your WP.com username, if you want to keep your author URLs.

We also had some problems with duplicate and non-working categories, but for most part those are easy to fix using the WP admin panel (except for the categories that show up as numbers, no idea where they came from).

Change nameservers

Image search gave this for "nameservers", but changing them isn't as hardcore or cool. Beards are recommended, though.

Once you change your domain’s nameservers to your new host, it can take some hours before DNS caches around the intertubes get updated. In the meantime strange things can happen and people might end up at different places or your blog might be unreachable. Also, if you take advantage of WordPress.com’s Gmail integration, remember to copy over those DNS entries too. (We didn’t, so no idea how that is done.)

Now is the time to go to your new blog’s settings and change the blog URLs to the “real” ones (in our case, from techiteasy.webfactional.com to www.techiteasy.org).

You might want to use something like IntoDNS to check the status of your DNS entries and that they’re working.

Once this is all clear, you might want to use Google’s webmaster tools to see if there are any problems with your site. You can do this earlier, but you need to verify the domain to access all the stuff (and you can’t verify it while on WP.com).

This is also a good point to send e-mails to other authors of your blog of all the changes you’ve done (Sorry, guys) and that they might need to create new accounts.

One nice side effect is that people who access your blog’s ancient address (yourblog.wordpress.com) are redirected to your new place as long as you’ve subscribed to WP’s own domain thing. This also goes for RSS feeds. However, it’s a bit troublesome trying to access your old blog’s admin panel anymore at WP.com, because even that tries to redirect to the new one. Once you get there, though, you might want to write an entry explaining that the site has moved for the time when your domain add-on runs out at WP.com.

Conclusion

And that’s pretty much that. Now what you need to do is to keep on cranking out blog posts.

Maintaining your blog on your own does add a bunch of overhead. You need to make sure your setup is up-to-date and secure. On the other hand, you have complete freedom to tweak every aspect of your blog. For us, the benefits of latter were big enough to do the change. If this had been my personal blog, I wouldn’t have bothered.

The migration is far from simple and there are lots of things that can go wrong, so do set a good amount of time to do the migration (fe. a weekend). Basically as long as you don’t update nameservers, you have a nice test environment where to test out different aspects of your new and shiny blog. The only problem is syncing the content (including comments) between your “live” and test sites.

So far, I’ve been very pleased by the set-up Webfaction has and do recommend them. Full SSH and their custom domain/app/site panel are excellent. It beats hands down many of the other hosts that I’ve used so far. Even though with the latest WordPress that doesn’t mean so much because you don’t have any reason to dig into the system with FTP or SSH because everything is available from the web interface.

Photos by Bethany L King (CC BY-ND 2.0) and rangerdawson.

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Thoughts about Tech IT Easy, inspired by my time in Paris

Vincent van Wylick — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:34:09 +0000

First of all, Paris was great! For three days, Jeremy (Fain, founder of Tech IT Easy & Verteego.com) drove me crazy in a good way, by mapping out every single minute of my life. Similarly to how we met up in Barcelona, it was a great way to get to know the city and at the same time realise that truly knowing Paris will require some further trips back.

Since Tech IT Easy was founded by a Parisian, I felt it was good to go to the source and have a “vision-refresher” as it were. At its peak, this group-blog featured 15 writers, the majority of which was from France or situated there at some point. Many are now spread across this planet and it’s sites like Tech IT Easy that represent a small node where we can occasionally brush against each other (in an intellectual way) and exchange the wisdom we have learned.

Meeting several Tech IT Easy authors, Steve Danino and Emmanuel Perez-Duarte, it reconfirmed to me the intellectual spirit in which this weblog was founded, as well as the search for something, anything, but probably tech- (and/or business!-) related. Many of our authors enjoy a solid educational background, which is both good and bad. Good, in the sense of the value it brings. Bad, because there are many opportunity costs in life and even more so for well-educated men and women. It is clear then that we all write when we can, but more often than not, we cannot.

It is all the more important then to get more (and more and more) fresh blood onto Tech IT Easy to replace those that have moved on, and to connect those who are “old” to those who are “new.” The vision, my vision for Tech IT Easy has always been that of building a community of talented people who directly and indirectly assist each other to make our world a (technological) marvel.

Does that work in practice? In my opinion, only if people work hard at making it happen and the effects are far from direct or instantaneous. Rather, if I need to speak to an interesting person in France (or anywhere really) or bounce a complicated idea of someone, I’ll often look up one of our Tech IT Easy members and vice versa.

A few blog posts that I thought were great and directly showed off the value of some of our members, were Remy Miralles‘s posts about being a software developer, and Cecil Dijoux‘s (who is incidentally also a musician by night) posts about High Availability Architecture. I have met neither of them yet, but I know the day will come. These posts are more the exception to the rule, which is that, on this weblog, we often do not market ourselves, but instead think out loud and whatever opportunities happen because or outside of it, are the individual’s own. The risk is that sometimes you of course do the opposite of marketing, but hey…

It is the nature of the beast that is blogging that its value is hard to determine. We host this weblog for a negligible amount and the 45 min. a day that I spend blogging on it is also negligible in terms of expense. We could value this blog by asking for money, but apart from some unobtrusive monetisation exercises on the horizon, we will not make a serious effort at that… because it would create a different kind of pressure and hence different kind of focus. But, who knows…

The value that Tech IT Easy has to me, remains to be that node, out of which occasionally there is some new strings that are formed, either intellectually or through building up a new relationship or venture. Everything else is… soft tissue.

In the words of the once great Arnold, I’ll be back!
Vincent

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[Editorial] Personal branding or how one man brought down a site

Vincent van Wylick — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 07:14:58 +0000

You may have noticed that I sign my name below my posts on tech it easy. The reason is that when we first started guest writing on this, Jeremy Fain’s blog, he asked us to write a small introduction before each post, a habit which we later abandoned. I miss the practice, but what I think was most valuable about it, was that it positioned each of us as a separate voice on the collection of thoughts that is tech it easy.

As I am, for now, a lonely contributor to tech it easy, this practice is perhaps completely unnecessary, but I still maintain it, perhaps for egotistical reasons. I like standing for what I write. At the same time, it may also cast a kind of shadow across other people’s [unsigned] post, which is definitely not my intention.

I’d like to know your opinion on it, whether you are a blogger (in which case, imagine yourself blogging on a site that once had 15 active writers) or a reader, and how you feel about the signing of names.

What do you think?
Vince

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[Editorial] Doing what we do

Vincent van Wylick — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 09:08:02 +0000

I’m pretty disappointed in the readers of tech it easy—you can comment on the light stuff, what doesn’t really matter, but you won’t on the things that do. It makes me re-evaluate the value of blogging. I’m about to engage on a journey, which I know will take me away from blogging for some time. As you already know, I blog when I can and don’t when I can’t. Perhaps it’s the same way with the way you comment, I doubt it, but I’m no mind-reader either; I just know what works for me and what doesn’t.

Internally, at tech it easy, we’ve been having a discussion about the future of the site, part of which I’d like to share with all of you. As is evident, I have been the main blogger here for some time, which doesn’t make me the boss [there is none], but it gives me a strong say in the matter. What we considered, briefly, was to make tech it easy a more commercial endeavour, with all the good and bad that brings, mainly:

moving to a dedicated server and away from wordpress.com, which would give more flexibility in terms of design and content.
implicitly, dedicating time, energy, and money to building up the tech it easy brand

Doing this would require initiative, leadership, and hard work, from the team, which is, at the moment, only a handful.

Here is the profound part of this post [I expect that 80% of you have stopped reading by now]. It is the way I feel about the direction we should take, and I prefer having it scrutinised in public, rather than in private.

The way I feel is really the way I behave, which is that I find maintaining tech it easy solo a pretty hard job and would like help with that; I find some of the “features” that wordpress.com brings to the table pretty great [e.g. no worries about things going wrong technologically] and some things pretty frustrating [e.g. little script-support, though things have been getting better]; I don’t feel hampered by the lack of income from the site, though I do feel unhappy about the lack of discussion [worth more than any cash amount]; And I don’t feel like I should be managed better [i.e. professionally], but I do feel that some things can be structured better, such as who posts, when, and that’s it.

Are these “feelings” enough to make changes on the site? … … …

No.

I don’t think they are. What tech it easy allows for right now is for a team of writers to post when they can, which is part of the attraction to blog here. Everyone who has joined tech it easy so far has a passion for technology and will certainly, at some point, feel the need to write something about it. When they do, I am happy and I hope you are too. If they don’t, que sera, que sera, as they say. It’s a free world and a free site.

[incidentally, if you feel the need to write and would like to do so on tech it easy, give me a buzz]

That is all I have to say on the matter. In summary, moving the site will create more freedom, but it will also make matters more complex, and it won’t automatically lead to a better blog. Readers, bloggers, I’ve had my say. It’s your turn now, if you chose to take it.

Vincent

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Blogging is …

Vincent van Wylick — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:01:30 +0000

When I was a young, innocent kid, growing up in the small German town of Bonn, I remember one thing very well. That is, looking at my father’s Bild Zeitung (he is and was a big football fanatic) and seeing the cartoon “love is …” Each week (or day, I don’t remember), a new cartoon would appear, with a new definition of love. Whether it made a difference, I don’t know, but it does still have some nostalgic value.

Today, …

Similar to love, I think that writing or “blogging,” as the kids call it, has a certain subjective value. I think that, from my observation of my own behaviour and that of others, blogging is … the desire to figure out stuff. I started blogging as a student, as did Jeremy, Fidji, and many others on Tech IT Easy. Now, as my study-time is over, I find myself having less time for studying, which is sad really. What has taken over is that “learning on the job” thing, which makes you good at building up routines, but not necessarily at the brain-qualities that blogging benefits from.

I think that blogging also fits other paradigms, such as to publish news, to market something or someone, and to make money, many of which aren’t my own, but which certainly have more relevance to “in business” thinking and action.

Just one of the thoughts floating through my mind this week, as I’m spending a lot more time figuring out stuff, than learning on the job.

Vincent

The behavioural economics of mass-media

Vincent van Wylick — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:33:15 +0000

I wrote a pretty angry post yesterday. You didn’t read it, but the gist came down to that it is frustrating to blog and then not be commented on. 90% of my posts are *out loud thinking* ones, meaning that it doesn’t provide a simple answer, but is meant to start a discussion about, very possibly, how wrong I am. I’m glad it wasn’t published in its original form, though the issue remains and I am considering to drop blogging, because it’s pretty unrewarding to me on the whole.

I do have a theory about blogging though, about the internet really, taking a strategic and economical stance. From a strategic perspective, I’ve already written that the barriers to entry in this industry are extremely low. Last year or the year before, Jeremy wrote about the huge amount of blogs out there. I’m sure that number has increased.

Take that together with the problem of marmalade. Have too much of it on your shelves and you’ll hardly sell anything at all; have a select choice of items, and you’ll do well.

Translation: either don’t blog or don’t blog differently, and you’ll be safe. It’s no wonder that Techmeme was such a success, we love it when one topic is covered over and over again, because there’s only space for so many new topics in our heads.

It’s not just blogs that have to operate this way. The music industry increasingly does too. I wrote a little essay about it, which I also never published. It’s entitled “20,000 songs in your pocket.”

With those words, Steve Jobs essentially signed the death warrant of music. How special is a song, which is a work of love for many an artist, if it has to compete with 19,999 other ones? So technology has killed art, and so there remains little to be said, except to accept that fact.

Whether it’s 20,000 songs, or 1 million blogs, or 1000 blog posts, while before your wisdom may have previously been confined to a single page. Multitude eradicates individuality and the beast it produces is as yet unknown. Can we make order out of chaos, can we bring it to a coherent whole, develop a technology that brings that forward which is of value? These are the questions that should be asked… perhaps… perhaps not.

It is the natural state of humanity to bring change. Our whole lives are centred around birth, a short life, and death. During our lives, new people are born, with new and different lives, different thoughts and ideas. Every generation can and must bring about change, because they cannot do the same thing that their parents have done.

And so, perhaps, 20,000 songs in your pocket isn’t the end of art after all. 20,000 songs merely exposes us to more, more quickly, and also forces us to adapt. Either we set artificial boundaries—10 songs in your pocket, how’s that?—or we do in fact produce an AI that translates it for us all. But truly, doing that would mean that our kind of intelligence, the kind that can block out the nonsense in our lives, has become replaced.

The end… and the beginning!

I guess it was an ode to the human brain, which makes decisions that work best for it. Do I have an answer, except to perhaps quit blogging or try to beat that human brain? Not yet! If you do, feel free to leave a comment.

Have a nice weekend!
Vincent

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Happy (post-)Hanukkah, Christmas, Boxing Day, and Kwanzaa !!!

Vincent van Wylick — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 08:58:33 +0000

Well, I don’t want to be culturally insensitive…

We, the Tech IT Easy crew of new and old, wish all of you innocent internet bystanders a happy and joyful [insert your celebration here] and hope to see you back here with slightly rounder stomachs and at least a new gadget or two.

L♥ve
The Tech IT Easy crew

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Poll: Decide the future of Tech IT Easy (my part in it, at least)

Vincent van Wylick — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:26:47 +0000

Dear readers,

These last few weeks, months, you will have noticed that content on Tech IT Easy has mainly been provided by me, Vincent, with sporadic, but much appreciated interjections by other bloggers. Why this is the case differs for every person on this blog and I will not go into those reasons.

When this blog was started by Jeremy Fain, it came out of his vision, one which he expanded into building a group-blog, which, for a long time now, has managed to stay alive. Now that I’m the main blogger here, however, I find myself somewhat conflicted with following that vision, which I’ve always seen being focussed on the tech and business space (with some other content interjected).

My background is a-similar to Jeremy, because I don’t have the tech-education and other experiences that he has enjoyed. Rather I am an international citizen, with a passion for innovation and business, as well as plenty of other stuff, and I am able put a few words together about these topics. That said, my work and interests also take me out of the tech-space much of the time, which makes writing about tech more of a hypothetical exercise than anything else.

So I ask those of you that read this blog what you would prefer from my part. Would you prefer that I continue as I have, writing about anything that comes to mind, with the occasional tech-component? Or would you prefer less updates from me on Tech IT Easy (in which case, I will re-open my personal blog) and the occasional blogpost about tech and/or business?

Please answer the following poll to give me an insight, thanks!

[polldaddy poll=1120707]

Vincent

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The key to (my) prolific writing

Vincent van Wylick — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:19:26 +0000

Visitors to Tech IT Easy may have noticed a slight increase in posting-rhythm last week—I averaged at about 2 articles a day. They say that the simplest reason is often the most straightforward one—I was on a brief relaxing holiday—but that wasn’t actually the core-reason why I wrote more.

Last week, I managed to read two books, one of which I blogged about and another of which, a draft is awaiting some QC before being posted. I remember this effect when I was a youngster, reading always made me feel like writing something. Countless were the fantasy-stories I started, but never finished, back when I was reading Tolkien et al.

Luckily blogposts are shorter… during my one year stint on foodandretail.blogspot.com, where I blogged daily, I was on a constant regime of reading related articles and books at night and blogging about them soon after.

There you have it: reading more makes you a more prolific writer. I also say this now that a study revealed that reading less and watching more TV makes you unhappy—or is it that unhappy people watch more TV, I can never figure out the chicken or the egg…

So what are you waiting for, go pick up a book and make some time to read it!

Vincent

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Positioning Tech IT Easy, continued

Vincent van Wylick — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 15:57:58 +0000

Hello, it’s Vincent and I propose a coup: I will take over Tech IT Easy as, at the very least, head-editor and/or, at the very most, vice-president, after our revered founder, Jeremy Fain, who is busy with other things now. Say ‘Yay‘ or ‘Nay‘ in the comments. Of course, the only reason I would do so is because I’m tired of introducing myself in the intro for the 5th time this week, though I would like the less frequent bloggers to do so, please. This is my first decree.

Today’s post is a little public brainstorm on where I would like to see Tech IT Easy go. This is a follow-up to my last post from last week.

Positioning!

Bearing in mind the 4 C’s of positioning: Continuity, Clarity, Competitiveness, and Confidence, where would we like to see Tech IT Easy go, both from the blogger’s perspective as well as You, the reader?

My position!

I have some thoughts on this. Any blog needs a goal, and so far we have not made this goal very explicit, though we each have one. For me this goal is not to write, far from it, rather it’s the exchange of ideas and the meeting of people. I have taken blogging on Tech IT Easy very seriously, taking it beyond this webpage and contacting people directly to help me with my many questions.

When I look for a job, I talk to my friends, when I want to start a business, I talk to my friends. And they are all more than welcome to talk to me. That said, friendship is contextual! I don’t believe in non-sollicited contact, as a matter of fact if people send requests to us about “reviewing” their website, etc., I more than often ignore it, because for them it’s cheap marketing and for me and you it’s rarely worth anything. Rather, a relationship is something you work on, together, and which comes out of shared experiences.

From my perspective, Tech IT Easy is a relationship-building tool. We don’t use it for marketing ourselves, but we use it to build relationships with the world around us so that we all become smarter people.

I would like you co-bloggers and readers to chime in on this, via the comments (or mail, if necessary).

How to get there!

If we agree that Tech IT Easy is about relationship-building, both internally and externally, then we have to continue with defining a good “relationship.”

In come the 4 C’s again.

Continuity: A good relationship is ongoing, which means that you have to nurture it and dedicate time to it. To blog here, to build that relationship, you have to commit to blog at least once a month. Basta! I’m currently working in 1.5 part-time ventures, and even I can make time for 1 post a month, even when I move on to more full-time engagements. I’ll keep track of this and you can of course always talk to me about it. And if a conversation is started, you have to keep it going somehow, as well. You are responsible for your content and the conversation!
Clarity: A good relationship has well-defined values, meaning that your posts must be clear and relevant to you and your readers. If you’re writing for just yourself, you better make it a topic that other people want to read about too. And you have read and re-read your words to see if your message comes across.
Competitiveness: Be continuous, be clear, and 99% of this is done. Don’t write crap, don’t plagiarise, don’t post videos that add no value to anyone, and… don’t write crap. Have a take on the world that is just your own and which we can debate. That’s the other 1%!
Confidence: If you believe in yourself to be an ongoing presence on Tech IT Easy, if you know that you write clearly, if you know that you write competitively, then you can be confident that all of us, bloggers and readers, will have your back… even beyond blogging, in whatever venture or activity you want to engage in. You want to climb a mountain, I can help you. You want to be a musician, Cecil can help you. You want to solve the credit crunch, Kari can (probably) help you. You want to start a company, many here can help you. Be good, be there, and we love you.

Sustainable models!

I’m going to steal one of Verteeblog’s graphs now. Sustainability can be interpreted in many different ways, but to me it means that whatever energy you expend, must come back to you somehow. The same applies to blogging.

What are our expenditures:

Time spent blogging
Money spent on this domain, etc. (we will leave this out of the equation for now)
Time spent marketing (which is really blogging)
Time spent recruiting (which is really blogging)

What is our income:

Life experience, which leads to new ideas
Feedback through comments and email, which leads to new ideas
New bloggers, which makes our hive smarter

Sustainability on Tech IT Easy comes from doing the first 4 well (respecting the 4 C’s), and the last 3 will follow automatically!

This is my vision, regarding the future of Tech IT Easy and I will try my best to set that example.

As always, I appreciate your comments and feedback (except if your feedback is that I write too textbook—I am who I am).

Vincent

Of course, if this in any way inspired you, if you want to contribute to making Tech IT Easy a better blog, and in return make yourself a smarter person with smart friends, then, by all means, join us!

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Positioning yourselves in and as a group-blog

Vincent van Wylick — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 21:16:51 +0000

Hi, my name is Vincent and I’m a group-blogger on Tech IT Easy. Today, I plan to talk to you about where I see Tech IT Easy going.

We can’t really say that Tech IT Easy is that much of a group-blog anymore. As far as I can count, 3 people out of 15, outside of me, are still posting occasionally. And that’s fine, this isn’t a job, we are a not-for-profit-just-for-fun organisation. And most of us have moved on in life since we started blogging here, me included.

Group-blogging is a funny animal. When you run your own blog or diary, writing is fairly easy. You experience, you think, you write, presto. In theory, group-blogging should be similar, but it isn’t. In a solo-operation, you develop relationships with your readers (and your words!), it ends up being a continuous back & forth, between your thoughts, their feedback, and your renewed thoughts.

In a group-blog, it is harder to maintain that relationship. Different topics, different writing styles, different types of readers, etc. all lead to an interrupted experience for authors and readers both. It’s like you give a presentation, but people keep jumping in with their own presentations.

I suppose I’m saying that group-blogging is bad. I’m not, but there are certain conditions that have to be met. For one, you have to respect the reader, your customer. Why is he here and are we constantly offering him value? Are we providing him continuous value or interrupted value? Are we competitive in our approach? Are we confident and clear? The four C’s of positioning: clarity, confidence, continuity, and competitiveness.

In my opinion, that is not the case. None of us compete, because we literarily cannot afford to. The Techmeme-leaderboard has been like a mirror to many a blogger like myself, showing us that the most read “blogs” are in fact professional media-companies with a business-model similar to newspapers. They serve adverts and pay their bloggers. We do not, which creates an imperfect opportunity cost situation. Do I make money in a job or do I blog here pro bono? Naturally, there are other rewards to blogging here, but I won’t go into that now.

Continuity and clarity are related. Continuity in groups is just like it is in organisations: a standard is set and met or else you are fired. Well that also doesn’t happen here and rarely will. Clarity is about how clearly you write about your topic of the day, are you making sense to the reader? Again standards can be set for that, I recommend learning Ogilvy by hard.

The most important one: confidence. This post I write is not confident. Well, I am confident in the sense that you all know me by now. But I am not at all confident about what will be written on this blog tomorrow or next week. That is something that is up to every author, pretty much.

Now, the original intent of this post is not to sound overly negative. Everyone here has qualities, or else they wouldn’t be a blogger. Everyone can write. But writing also takes following a voice that’s in your head and just going for it. And it requires you to say stop at some point. Around 175 words ago for me would be best.

A suggested approach to positioning

This is meant for our current authors, but also future ones. And to clarify, I am not the boss here, but a wise old guy at the very least.

Rule 1: introduce yourselves. If you don’t put your name down, how will the reader know it’s you? Apart from Georgia, most of us don’t paint our identity (sometimes quite literarily) with words.
Rule 2: explain your thesis in a sentence or two in the intro.
Rule 3: use pictures or don’t, up to you.
Rule 4: don’t write as much as me (400 is a good length)… and if you do write more, use bullet-points and headings.
Rule 5: paragraphs are nice to read, around 6 lines at the most, I would say.
Rule 6: Don’t be afraid to write about other things than tech. It’s you we are reading and the more you write, the more we get you. And honestly, I have little in tech left in me to write about.
Rule 7: Don’t get too creative with text. Georgia is the exception to the rule, but even her posts I have to read twice, sometimes thrice to get what she’s talking about. Of course, the thesis at the beginning helps.
Rule 8: write as if you’re applying for a job. Tech IT Easy may not pay you, but you will want to put it on your CV. And the only way to that is if it is a product that you’re proud of.
Rule 9: Don’t be cheap with your content. I sometimes felt like just posting a video, because I was angry at the lack of feedback I was getting. That’s a bad impulse! Respect your readers and they respect you.
Rule 10: the best blogposts that are at the tip of your head, just when you’re writing them. If you need to research your post extensively(!), while writing it, it’s probably going to be a bad blogpost.
Rule 11: always end lists with an uneven number… to piss off that Digg-crowd.

Clarity, competitiveness, continuity, confidence, and not losing yourself in the middle, that’s what it’s all about.

The end,

Vincent

P.S. If you’d like to show us how a good group-blog is produced, click here.

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Refleditorial: Less questions, more answers, and reasons to (not) blog

Vincent van Wylick — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 19:34:46 +0000

Refleditorial: a combination of reflection & editorial.

It’s 20:47 over here, it’s been a long day, and I’m in an introspective mood. A few months ago, after I concluded my last blog and “renewed” my commitment to this one, it actually happened in parallel with the conclusion of another long-lasting activity: my thesis. Academic work is, in my opinion, largely an exercise in breaking out of theory, easier for some than others. It’s easy to read about theories, write about them, and test their validity—it’s much harder to make it relevant to day-to-day life. That’s not the life for me, I don’t think, so I was happy to see it go.

So when I began blogging back here again, I started with asking more practice-orientated questions: how are companies set up, how do hire a person, etc., etc. I got some amazing comments on those, which I very much appreciate. But comments aren’t the same as blog-posts, not every one of you goes beyond the rss-feed, and in retrospect, I should’ve focussed more on reblogging the great comments. I’ll go back to some and will do so in the future.

Less questions, more answers… I guess it’s somewhat of a balancing-act. Bloggers get smarter through interacting with their readers, and sometimes the best way to get that input is to just ask. At the same time, readers get smarter through great blog-posts, and the best way to create that output in the form of qualitative articles. The best way to ensure that the balance works is, I find, a certain continuity. By continuing to write, you vocalise themes that single blog-posts cannot encapsulate, qualities that are associated with you, no matter what you write. It’s an ongoing process for me and other bloggers, and I’ll try my best to not disappoint.

Lastly, reasons (not) to blog… I think we’ve all gone through it: the more we focus on other things, the less space is left for blogging. It’s the reason why I don’t entirely believe in blogging in a corporate context, though there are certainly examples that prove me wrong. It’s probably a life-cycle thing: as you build something, you dedicate your time fully to it. As your creation matures, you can focus more on marketing and reflect about innovating. When you look at Signal Vs. Noise, everyone of their staff blogs and does it well. It’s even in their manifesto. But 37Signals is a built company. It definitely innovates, but it’s main activity is to make small changes, think about new products & services, market, and collect the monthly checks. The same applies to people, btw.: You build your career, sooner or later you reach a certain point where you can reflect on your life.

Tangible reasons I could think of for blogging in a corporate “building” context, would be to keep Google happy. By creating a continuous “lifestream” for your company, you alert Google to new content, so it keeps linking you up. At the same time, if you build great products that people like, other blogs can link you up too and will probably have a much greater effect. Innovation isn’t everything, neither is marketing, but it’s a combination of both.

That’s it. Reflection-time is over. As always, I love reading other perspectives, so by all means, tell me: Should companies blog during their building process? Should individuals blog in a corporate context? What value does it contribute to their and your lives?

Vincent

P.S. the picture is nonsensical, I just liked the imagery.

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