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Why I started blogging – and you should too!

This is a 4 or 5 part blog-post on why I started blogging. Most of this I wrote already a year ago, but then I never had the follow-through to publish it.

Short answer:

Because I get angry at myself if I don’t. Because I wanted to for years. And now is the time I start.

Done > Perfect.

No, seriously? Why would I blog? After all it takes valuable time!

  1. I have thought about a million topics. I am the kind of guy who will really dig into a topic for a few days. Then use the knowledge once, or twice, without making much notes and then moving to the next topic - often without anything to show for it.
  2. Because it is healthy to have a balanced radio of content you consume vs content you produce. Consume less, produce more!
  3. One on one talks don’t scale. This is my way of reaching more people.
  4. Because it’s important to share with the world what you created. For years I thought naively "well but if I document what I have done, will this not help my competition?" It is a very rare that keeping what you are doing stealth mode is the right choice. And getting feedback is more valuable. I am not applying that learning to my blogging so far.
  5. Because I forget. Like a lot. And it's nice to have something to look back on if you want to remember something.
  6. Because it’s great to reflect on how you thought a year ago. Thoughts change. It’s great to have a reference. And it’s important to measure your own progress and about increasing communication between the past, present and future you.
  7. Too much of what I did I can not show because it was done for work and I don't have the rights to it. So I don’t have a public documentation to show everyone. So I want to offset this with this blog and more public github publishing.
  8. I get annoyed by people I speak to wanting me to prove myself over and over again. I want to have something to point them to as a track record.
  9. I get annoyed not being invited as speaker sometimes. (Entitlement much?)
  10. Because I tend to do everything in pure Depth-first search fashion - I drilling down into a topic in depth, which should lend itself to interesting posts. (see 2.)
  11. Because loads of very smart people tell you [weasel words]
    it’s really important[peacock term] to practice your writing skill.[citation needed]
  12. If you write it down, it's science. Otherwise it's just fooling around.
  13. Because I don't want you to make the same mistakes as me
  14. And because I want to spread knowledge and recommendations
  15. To get customers or employment opportunities.

What do I want to blog on?

  1. The 20 years + of constantly digging into a technical topic.
  2. I often make deep thoughts about our society. But usually I tell it to one or two guys and then move on with my life.
  3. I created one of the earlier "startups" in 2010 in Vienna called indoo.rs, and had a tone of experience there as CTO and in the board. But I never shared it broadly. I gave rarely any talks. And usually people are surprised by my ideas when I tell them one on one.
  4. To document projects and what I do with my free time: learning languages, building electronics, working, studying, relationship, research, programming, hiking.
  5. Relationships and dating.
  6. I wanted to blog every time I took on a new hobby like ham radio
  7. I wanted to blog about politics and consumer protection
  8. The things I learned consulting different office dynamics and different organisational structures I saw with customers.
  9. (My own) failures.
  10. Travel
  11. The millions of shower thoughts 😉
  12. Attention/Eyeballs economy, Innovator's dilemma, founder dynamics, customers, marketing, .....
  13. I was at funeral some time ago and people were disgustingly unaware of what the dead guy was like when he was still alive. I fear it's quite common. So this is also some kind of attempt to document what kind of person I am and what I humbly think I have figured out so far.

This list is far from complete or well structured. But the point is those are a very broad selection of topics. That plays into "Post 3: Implementation, how did I decide to blog?"

Why not just use Facebook, Twitter, Medium?

First of all they are really good at what they do respectively. But

  1. I want to own the format. At Facebook, it's Facebook that decides which links get a preview. Which content gets which font size. What background you can chose for your text.
  2. When I signed up years ago on Facebook around 2011/2012 I can remember I was already annoyed that I can’t have have my own music playing on Facebook, like I would have been able to, if it was “my own” website. I want freedom. Don’t worry I won’t torture you with music (yet).
  3. Because I want to own the channel to the reader. I don’t want to be at the mercy of Facebook where the machine learning algorithm of the month decides who will see a notification about my post.
  4. I don't want to license my content to Facebook.

Does that mean that I will stop posting to Facebook and Twitter? On the contrary! More about this in the followup posts:

Part 2: The downsides of blogging and why you still should do it regardless.

Post 3: Implementation, how did I decide to blog?

Post 4: Twitter, Facebook, Social, how it all ties together. What I learned so far.

    Published