Tag Archives: Blogging

Production Reductions

Posted on by
1

You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been writing quite as much this year as I have in years past. I finally hit the wall that comes for all content creators. A combination of my job and the state of the industry meant that I found myself slipping off my self-appointed weekly posting schedule more and more often in 2023. In fact, there were several times I skipped a whole week to get put something out every other week, especially in the latter half of the year.

I’ve always wanted to keep the content level high around here and give my audience things to think about. As the year wore on I found myself running out of those ideas as portions of the industry slowed down. If other people aren’t getting excited about tech why should I? Sure, I could probably write about Wi-Fi 7 or SD-WAN or any number of topics over and over again but it’s harder to repeat yourself for an audience that takes a more critical eye to your writing than it is for someone that just wants to churn out material.

My Bruce Wayne job kept me busy this year. I’m proud of all the content that we created through Tech Field Day and Gestalt IT, especially things like the weekly Rundown show. Writing a post every week is hard. Writing a snarky news show script is just as taxing. If I can find a way to do that I can find a way to write, right?

Moving Targets

Alas, in order to have a plan for content creation you have to make a plan and then stick to it. I did that last year with my Tomversations pieces and it succeeded. This year? I managed to make one. Granted, it was a good one but it was still only one. Is it because I didn’t plan ahead far enough? Or because I didn’t feel like I had much to say?

Part of the secret behind writing is to jot down your ideas right away , no matter how small they might be. You can develop an idea that has merit. You can’t develop a lack of an idea. I have a note where I add quotes and suggestions and random things that I overhear that give me inspiration. Sometimes those ideas pan out. Other times they don’t. I won’t know either way if I don’t write them down and do something about them. If you don’t create the ground for your ideas to flourish you’ll have nothing to reap when it’s time.

The other thing that causes falloffs in content creation is timing. I always knew that leaving my posts until Friday mornings was going to eventually bite me and this year was the year with teeth. Forcing myself to come up with something in a couple of hours time initially led to some pretty rushed ideas and that later pushed into the following Monday (or beyond). While creating a schedule for my thoughts has helped me stay consistent throughout the years the pressures on my schedule this year have meant letting some things slip when they weren’t critical. Hard to prioritize a personal post over a work video that needs to be edited or a paper that needs to be written first.

One other thing that I feel merits some mention is the idea of using tools to help the creative process. I am personally against using a GPT algorithm to write for me. It just doesn’t sound like me and I feel that having something approximating who I am doesn’t have the same feel. Likewise, one of the other things this year that I’m fighting with is word predictions in writing tools. Not as bad as full-on content creation but merely “suggestions” about what word I want to use next. I’ve disabled them for the most part because, while helpful in certain situations they annoy me more than anything when writing. Seeing a tool suggest a word for me while I’m in the flow of writing a post is like hearing a note a half step out of tune in a piece of music. It’s just jarring enough to take you out of the whole experience. Stop trying to anticipate what I’m going to say and let me say it!

Producing Ahead

Does all this mean I’m giving up on my writing? Not hardly. I still feel like writing is my best form of communication. Even a simple post about complaining about my ability to write this year is going to be wordy. I feel it’s because written words give us more opportunity to work at our own pace. When we watch videos we work at someone else’s idea of a learning pace. If you make a ten-minute video to get across a point that could have been read in three minutes you’re either doing a very good job of explaining everything or you’re padding out your work. I prefer to skim, condense, and study the parts that are important to me. I can’t really do that with a video.

I feel the written form of content is still going to be king for years to come. You can search words. You can rephrase words. You can get a sense for how dense a topic is by word count. There’s value in seeing the entire body of knowledge in front of you before you begin. Besides, the backspace key is a whole lot easier to edit than doing another take and remembering to edit out the bad one in the first place.

Tom’s Take

Writing is practically meditation for me at this point. I can find a topic I’m interested in and write. Empty my brain of thoughts and ideas and let them take shape here. AI can’t approximate that for me. Video has too many other variables to worry about. That’s why I’m a writer. I love the way the process works with just a keyboard, a couple of references, and my brain doing the heavy lifting. I’m not sure what my schedule for posting is going to look like in 2024 and beyond but trust me when I say it’s not going away any time soon.

Content Creation Complications

Posted on by
1

If you’ve noticed my regular blog posts have been a bit irregular as of late you’re not alone. I’m honestly working through a bit of writer’s block as of late. The irony is that I’m not running out of things to talk about. I’m actually running out of time to talk about them the way that I want.

Putting in the Work

By now you, my dear readers, know that I’m not going to put out a post of 200-300 words just to put something out during the week. I’d rather spend some time looking into a topic and creating something that informs or encourages discussion. That means having sources or doing research.

Research takes time. Ironically enough I’ve always had a much easier time writing things so long as I have the info to pull from in my head. One of the side effects of neurodivergence that I’ve learned about recently is that neurodivergent people tend to write their ‘first draft’ in their head throughout the creation process. Rather than writing and rewriting over and over again I pool all the information in my brain and work through it all to put down my final thoughts. That means what comes out is what I want to say.

However, the time it takes to make that content soup isn’t immediate. Sometimes I find myself doing a massive amount of research to learn about something that ultimately becomes two or three sentences. The rest of the information gets discarded or filed away for use later on in something that might be totally unrelated.

Lightning Bolts

Now you probably see the difficulty in the content creation process when it happens like that. When I’m motivated to write something the words are flowing as I create and edit on the fly. I have lots to say about things and I often change course in mid-stream to pivot into an entirely different idea.

However, when I’m not feeling it the content is a bit harder to create. I have starter ideas that need to germinate but just like growing a plant it takes time. Sometimes that happens when I listen to a podcast or get a spark. Other times I’m walking in circles in my backyard hoping for a bolt from the blue to hit me with inspiration. When that doesn’t happen I just find myself struggling to come up with anything that can develop into a few hundred words.

I’ve been told by many friends that this is how the creative process feels for them all the time. They have ideas but no way to gain the inspiration to write them down. I would hope that there are ways to create and inspire that kind of creative process frequently. I can honestly say that it sucks when you can’t create because the information is stuck in there and it wants to come out. I just can’t make it do the work!

Tom’s Take

The behind-the-scenes part of content creation isn’t easy. It’s also much less glamorous than you might imagine. Remember that when you wonder how you’re going to create something. Don’t worry about making it perfect but make sure to get it all down. Keep yourself to your schedules and make something happen. Otherwise you’re going to be wandering in circles until you do.

Tech Field Day Changed My Life

Posted on by
Reply

It’s amazing to me that it’s been ten years since I attended by first Tech Field Day event. I remember being excited to be invited to Tech Field Day 5 and then having to rush out of town a day early to beat a blizzard to be able to attend. Given that we just went through another blizzard here I thought the timing was appropriate.

How did attending an industry event change my life? How could something with only a dozen people over a couple of days change the way I looked at my career? I know I’ve mentioned parts of this to people in the past but I feel like it’s important to talk about how each piece of the puzzle built on the rest to get me to where I am today.

Voices Carry

The first thing Tech Field Day did to change my life was to show me that I mattered. I grew up in a very small town and spent most of my formative school years being bored. The Internet didn’t exist in a usable form for me. I devoured information wherever I could find it. And I languished as I realized that I needed more to keep learning at the pace I wanted. When I finally got through college and started working in my career the same thing kept happening. I would learn about a subject and keep devouring that knowledge until I exhausted it. Yet I still wanted more.

Tech Field Day reinforced that my decision to start a blog to share what I was learning was the right one. It wasn’t as much about the learning as it was the explanation. Early on I thought a blog was just about finding some esoteric configuration stanza and writing about it. It wasn’t until later on that I figured out that my analysis and understanding and explanation was more important overall. Even my latest posts about more “soft skill” kinds of ideas are less about the ideas and how I apply them.

Blogging and podcasting are just tools to share the ideas that we have. We all have our own perspectives and people enjoy listening to those. They may not always agree. They may have their own opinions that they want to share. However, the part that is super critical is that everyone is able to share in a place where they can be discussed and analyzed and understood. As long as we all learn and grow from what we share then the process works. It’s when we stop learning and sharing and try to protest that our way is right and the only way that we stop growing.

Tech Field Day gave me the platform to see that my voice mattered and that people listened. Not just read. Not just shared. That they listened and that they wanted to hear more. People started asking me to comment on things outside of my comfort zone. Maybe it was wireless networking. It could have been storage or virtualization or even AI. It encouraged me to learn more and more because who I was and what I said was interesting. The young kid that could never find someone to listen when I wanted to talk about Star Wars or BattleTech or Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was suddenly the adult that everyone wanted to ask questions to. It changed the way I looked at how I shared with people for the better.

Not Just a Member, But the President

The second way Tech Field Day changed my life was when I’d finally had enough of what I was doing. Because of all the things that I had seen in my events from 2011 to 2013, I realized that working as an engineer and operations person for a reseller had a ceiling I was quickly going to hit. The challenges were less fun and more frustrating. I could see technology on the horizon and I didn’t have a path to get to a place to implement it. It felt like watching something cool happening outside in the yard while I was stuck inside washing the dishes.

Thankfully, Stephen Foskett knew what I needed to hear. When I expressed frustration he encouraged me to look around for what I wanted. When I tried to find a different line of work that didn’t understand why I blogged, it crystallized in me that I needed something very different from what I was doing. Changing who I was working for wasn’t enough. I needed something different.

Stephen recognized that and told me he wanted me to come on board without him. No joking that my job offer was “Do you want to be the Dread Pirate Roberts? I think you’d make an excellent Dread Pirate.”. He told me that it was hard work and unlike anything I’d ever done. No more CLI. No more router installations. In place of that would be event planning and video editing and taking briefings from companies all over the place about what they were building. I laughed and told him I was in.

And for the past eight years I’ve been a part of the thing that showed me that my voice mattered. As I learned the ropes to support the events and eventually started running them myself, I also grew as a person in a different way. I stopped by shy and reserved and came out of my shell. When you’re the face of the event you don’t have time to be hiding in the corner. I learned how to talk to people. I also learned how to listen and not just wait for my turn to talk. I figured out how to get people to talk about themselves when they didn’t want to.

Now the person I am is different from the nerdy kid that started a blog over ten years ago. It’s not just that I know more. Or that I’m willing to share it with people. It has now changed into getting info and sharing it. It’s about finding great people and building them up like I was built up. Every time I see someone come to the event for the first time I’m reminded of me all those years ago trying to figure out what I’d gotten myself into. Watching people learn the same things I’ve learned all over again warms my heart and shows me that we can change people for the better by showing them what they’re capable of and that they matter.

Tom’s Take

Tech Field Day isn’t an event of thousands. It’s personal and important to those that attend and participate. It’s not going to stop global warming or save the whales. Instead, it’s about the people that come. It’s about showing them they matter and that they have a voice and that people listen. It’s about helping people grow and become something they may not even realize they’re capable of. I know I sound biased because the pay the bills but even if I didn’t work there right now I would still be thankful for my time as a delegate and for the way that I was able to grow from those early days into a better member of the community. My life was changed when I got on that airplane ten years ago and I couldn’t be happier.

Winning in 2021

Posted on by
1

I’d jump in here and say something about 2020 being a crazy year but we all know it’s nothing we haven’t heard before. I’d also say that we’re going to look back at my big plans for the year however we also know that those got scrapped right after the end of February. I like looking back at a couple of things and then looking forward to what the next year will accomplish. Why? Because retrospectives are boring and putting your planning out there for the world to see is a much more interesting use of your time. The journey you’re taking changes greatly when you change your thinking about the destination.

2020 Good or Bad

2020 wasn’t all bad. I finally justified getting a new office chair! All kidding aside, 2020 was a year that challenged everyone greatly when it came to mental health, professional output, and even personal capability. My biggest focus for 2020 was to start putting blog posts out earlier in the week and focus on continuous improvement. I’d say the first was another miss due to the hectic workload, as a lot of my posts still came out on Fridays.

The second point was a bit more successful. I’ve been more diligent about getting stuff down and in a state when it can be improved. I’ve also added a lot of things to my repertoire over the year that I’m proud of. Here are some specifics:

  • Tomversations: I started a video series this year! I wanted to start coming up with monthly videos around topics that worked better as explorations instead of just simply spouting randomness. We put twelve episodes up last year starting around April. I was very happy with the way they turned out, especially toward the end when my process improved. Video is a great medium for some of the conversations I want to have.
  • The Rundown: Okay, this is a bit of stretch since I’ve been co-hosting the Rundown since it started. But this year my friend Rich Stroffolino headed off to future endeavors and I took over the production part on the back end. It’s been interesting skimming the news and putting it together each week to try and keep the sparkly magic going. It also means I’m much closer to the details behind the tech now.
  • Cooking: This was my big pandemic skill level up. My cooking skill has always been just shy of adequate. This year I pushed myself to get better about learning technique and saving recipes so I have something to pull from when I make food. The tastes have gotten way better and I feel more confident. I’d say the family is happier too since we have something other than Kraft Mac and Cheese all the time.
  • Running: This was my other pandemic level up. I fell off the exercise wagon at the end of 2019 and it showed. I was heavier than I had ever been. I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of getting back in shape either. Once the pandemic set in and I knew I wasn’t going to be on the road for the foreseeable future I jumped back on the road to running. Since June 1, I have run or walked over 900 miles and lost almost 50 pounds. I feel better and I look forward to lacing up my shoes and running every morning.

2021 More Time

That’s where my energy went in 2020. Video and research and cooking meals to eat after I ran. What am I thinking about for 2021?

  • Bullet Journaling: This is an idea I got from my partner in crime Ben Gage. I need a better system for capturing info and logging tasks. I say this every year. And every year I find a way to fail at it somehow. This year I’m going with the less-structured approach. I’m keeping the journal digital in GoodNotes and using these templates from Robert Terekedis (@robterakedis) that I found in a search. I like the hint of organization with the freedom to do more when I want it done. Let’s hope this sticks!
  • More Video Content: Like I don’t spend enough time on camera? I’m going to explore the idea of doing more video content. I’m not going to do a daily log or anything but I’m going to try and figure out if creating more around some of my ideas but putting it on video will help me solidify it a little. I’ve found through Tomversations that my ability to riff on subjects and think through stuff when I’m staring at a camera lens feels much different than facing a computer keyboard. It’s not better or worse. It’s different and I’m curious about where that will lead.
  • Create Content that Resonates: My blog is ten years old now. There are posts from 2011 that don’t apply to anything any longer. Some of the posts that I’ve been putting out recently aren’t as technical and look more at work skills, soft skills, or even just life skills. Many of you have commented that my ideas around time management or organization are things you wanted or needed to hear. I’m going to explore those ideas a bit this year too. Don’t worry – The Networking with a Side of Snark isn’t going away any time soon. And I’m not going to turn into a productivity blogger overnight. Mostly because I don’t have enough productivity to make that happen! But I want people to enjoy reading my content for what it can help them with in the next twelve months of working with the challenges we will face.

Tom’s Take

2020 was a sucky year in general. Too much stress, too much uncertainty, and for those that tend to overanalyze everything it was a year of way too much introspection and questioning. I’m looking forward to the next 52 weeks to sort out what needs to be done and get it finished. I set good habits in 2020 that I want to carry forward. I’m going to keep improving just like last year and use the tools I can to make those changes a part of what I need to do to ensure that 2021 is filled with more winning than anything else. I may not be on a plane at all this year. However, I can win all I can from my house and help you all along with the way too. Let’s enjoy the coming 525,600 minutes and do something that makes us feel like winners.

A Decade of Blogging

Posted on by
1

Today is a milestone for me. Ten years ago I picked up a virtual notepad for the first time and committed my first blog post to the ether. It’s been a wild ride ever since. It also marks the milestone of being the job that I’ve held the longest so far in my career.

Blogging has been a huge boon for me. I’ve become a better writer in the last decade. I’ve learned how to ask the right questions and get good material for a story instead of just putting out what someone wants me to say. I’ve learned that being a pseudo-journalist is a thing you can do and have fun with.

I’ve written a ton over the years. 751 posts, as a matter of fact (counting this one). I’ve always tried to hold myself to a standard of getting something out once a week. Aside from the few times when I’ve tried to push that to twice a week I’ve held up pretty well. Yeah, I’ve slipped and the day job has gotten in the way more than once. However, keeping myself to a strict schedule has ensured that my attention stays focused on this blog and that it doesn’t lapse into irrelevance any more than normal.

It’s also opened up a lot of doors for me. Blogging was how I got introduced to the Packet Pushers and raised my profile from “crazy nerd that writes” to “crazy nerd that is a podcast guest.” That got me involved with Tech Field Day and from there things went all the way to Mars. In fact, it was Tech Field Day that helped me understand the importance of writing and to rededicating myself to what I do. And to the job interviewer that considered my blogging to be a hobby, not unlike restoring cars or fishing, I think I can safely say it’s become way more than either of us could have imagined.

I’m still creating content all over the place. In addition to all the stuff I do for my day job at Tech Field Day, I write coverage from our events and the briefings I take at Gestalt IT. I have started making videos. I am part of a weekly podcast that covers IT news and lets me be a little snarky now and then. I’ve seen the shift of content moving from written words to spoken words to video and beyond. There’s no shortage of information being shared today, even if some of it is shared in formats that favor shorter attention spans.

What more is there to write about at this point? I go back and look at my early posts and laugh at how I originally wanted to get my thoughts down about structured troubleshooting. And then it morphed into CCIE studies. Then SDN. Or maybe engineering woes. All of it has been growth for me. I’ve learned how to argue and not assassinate character. I’ve seen how people can take different sides of the same argument. I’ve even seen how the things we have settled years before come back around for a new generation of networking pros to argue over again and again.

I love this place. It’s one of the reasons why I’m the only writer here. And trust me, the content mills are always emailing me to put up sponsored posts. But I keep turning them down because this is my place for my thoughts. I want those of you that still read along with me to enjoy what I think about something or know that what I’m saying isn’t a post that was compensated. Knowing where I’m coming from hopefully helps you all understand how the forces in the market and the community drive what we see, what we learn, and what we do with it all.

Tom’s Take

I’m glad I made it through my warm up period for blogging. The funny thing about writing is that you just keep getting better and better as you go along. Who I am hasn’t really changed. A few of the certifications are retired or expired. Twitter is still a thing that I do. But this is where I belong. It’s my home and my work and the place where I get to be me. I hope the next decade is as much fun and as meaningful for all of you as it has been for me!

2019 Is The King of Content

Posted on by
1

2018 was a year full of excitement and fun. And for me, it was a year full of writing quite a bit. Not only did keep up my writing here for my audience but I also wrote quite a few posts for GestaltIT.com. You can find a list of all the stuff I wrote right here. I took a lot of briefings from up-and-coming companies as well as talking to some other great companies and writing a couple of series about SD-WAN.

It was also a big year for the Gestalt IT Rundown. My co-host with most Rich Stroffolino (@MrAnthropology) and I had a lot of fun looking at news from enterprise IT and some other fun chipset and cryptocurrency news. And I’ve probably burned my last few bridges with Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg to boot. I look forward to recording these episodes every Wednesday and I hope that some of you will join us on the Gestalt IT Facebook page at 12:30 EST as well.

Content Coming Your Way

So, what does that leave in store for 2019? Well, since I hate predictions on an industry scale, that means taking a look at what I plan on doing for the next year. For the coming 365 days, that means creating a lot of content for sure. You already know that I’m going to be busy with a variety of fun things like Networking Field Day, Mobility Field Day, and Security Field Day. That’s in addition to all the things that I’m going to be doing with Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live Europe and Cisco Live US in San Diego.

I’m also going to keep writing both here and at Gestalt IT. You probably saw my post last week about how hard it is to hit your deadlines. Well, it’s going to be a lot of writing coming out in both places thanks to coverage of briefings that I’m taking about industry companies as well as a few think pieces about bigger trends going on in the industry.

I’m also going to experiment more with video. One of the inspirations that I’m looking at is none other than my good friend Ethan Banks (@ECBanks). He’s had some amazing videos series that he’s been cranking out on his daily walks. He’s been collecting some of them in the Brain Spasms playlist. It’s a really good listen and he’s tackling some fun topics so far. I think I’m going to try my hand at some solo video content in the future at Gestalt IT. This blog is going to stay written for the time being.

Creating Content Quickly

One of the other things that I’m playing around with is the idea of being able to create content much more quickly and on the spot versus sitting down for long form discussions. You may recall from a post in 2015 that I’ve embraced using Markdown. I’ve been writing pretty consistently in Markdown for the past three years and it’s become second nature to me. That’s a good thing for sure. But for 2019, I’m going to branch out a bit.

The biggest change is that I’m going to try to do the majority of my writing on an iPad instead of my laptop. This means that I can just grab a tablet and type out some words quickly. It also means that I can take notes on my iPad and then immediately translate them into thoughts and words. I’m going to do this using iA Writer as my content creation tool. It’s going to help me with my Markdown as well as helping me keep all the content I’m going to write organized. I’m going to force myself to use this new combination unless there’s no way I can pull it off, such as with my Cisco Live Twitter list. That whole process still relies quite a bit on code and not on Markdown.

As I mentioned in my deadline post, I’m also going to try to move my posting dates back from Friday to Wednesday or Thursday at the latest. That gives me some time to play around with ideas and still have a cushion before I’m late with a post. On the big days I may still have an extra post here or there to talk about some big news that’s breaking. I’m hoping this allows me to get some great content out there and keep the creative juices flowing.

Tom’s Take

2019 is going to be a full year. But it allows me to concentrate on the things that I love and am really good at doing: Writing and leading Tech Field Day. Maybe branching out into video is going to give me a new avenue as well, but for now that’s going to stay pretty secondary to the writing aspect of things. I really hope that having a more mobile writing studio also helps me get my thoughts down quickly and create some more compelling posts in the coming year. Here’s hoping it all works out and I’ve got some great things to look back on in 365 days!

 

Meeting Your Deadlines Is Never Easy

Posted on by
1

2018 has been a busy year. There’s been a lot going on in the networking world and the pace of things keeps accelerating. I’ve been inundated with things this last month, including endless requests for my 2019 predictions and where I think the market is going. Since I’m not a prediction kind of person, I wanted to take just a couple of moments to talk more about something that I did find interesting from 2018 – deadlines.

Getting It Out The Door

Long-time readers of this blog may remember that I’ve always had a goal set for myself of trying to get one post published every week. It’s a deadline I set for myself to make sure that I didn’t let my blog start decaying into something that is barely updated. I try to hold fast to my word and get something new out every week. Sometimes it’s simple, like reflections on one of the various Tech Field Day events that I’m working on that week. But there’s always something.

That is, until Cisco Live this year. I somehow got so wrapped up in things that I missed a post for the first time in eight years! Granted, this was the collection of several things going on at once:

  1. I was running Tech Field Day Extra during Cisco Live. So I was working my tail off the entire time.
  2. I was at Cisco Live, which is always a hugely busy time for me. Even when I’m not doing something specific to the event it’s social hour every hour.
  3. I normally write posts on Thursday afternoon to publish Friday this year. Guess what happened on Thursday at Cisco Live after we all said goodbye? I went on vacation with my family to Disney World. So I kind of forgot that I didn’t publish anything until Sunday afternoon.

The perfect confluence of factors led to me missing a deadline. Now, I’ve missed it again once more this year and totally forgotten to write something until the Monday following my deadline. And it’s even more frustrating when it’s something I totally could have controlled but didn’t.

Why the fuss? I mean, it’s not like all my readers are going to magically run away if I don’t put something out today or tomorrow. While that is very true, it’s more for me that I don’t want to forget to put content out. More than any other thing, scheduling your content is the key to keeping your readers around.

Think about network television. For years, they advertised their timeslots as much as they advertised their shows. Must-See Thursday. TGIF. Each of these may conjure images of friendly shows or of full houses. But you remember the day as much as you remember the shows, right? That’s because the schedule became important. If you don’t think that matters, imagine the shows that are up against big events or keep getting bumped because of sporting events. There’s a reason why Sunday evening isn’t a good time for a television show. Or why no one tries to put something up against the Super Bowl.

Likewise, schedules are important for blogging. I used to just hit publish on my posts whenever I finished them. That meant sending them out at 9pm on a Tuesday some times. Not the best time for people to want to dive into a technical post. Instead, I started publishing them in the mornings after I wrote them. That means more eyeballs and more time to have people reflect on them. I’ve always played around with the daily schedule of when to publish, but in 2018 it got pushed to Friday out of necessity. I kept running out of time. Instead of focusing on the writing, I would often wake up Friday morning with writer’s block and just churn something out to hit my deadline.

Writing because you have to is not fun. Wracking your brain to come up with some topic of conversation is stressful. Lee Badman has been posting questions every weekday morning to the wireless community for a long while and he’s decided that it’s run its course. I applaud Lee for stepping away from something like that before it became a chore. It’s not easy to leave something behind that has meant a lot to you.

Write Like The Wind

For me, blogging is still fun. I still very much enjoy sitting down in front of a computer keyboard and getting some great thoughts out there. I find my time at Tech Field Day events has energized my writing to a large degree because there is so much good content out there that needs to be discussed and indexed. I still enjoy pouring my thoughts out onto a piece of digital paper for everyone to read.

Could I cut back to simple reaction posts? Sure. But that’s not my style. I started blogging because I like the long-form of text. I’ve written some quick sub-500 word pieces because I needed to get something out. But those are the exceptions to the rule. I’d rather keep things thoughtful and encourage people to spend more time focusing on words.

I think the biggest thing that I need to change in the posting dates. I need to move back from Friday to give myself some headroom to post. I also need to use Friday as my last-ditch day to get things published. That may mean putting more thought to my posts earlier in the week for sure. It may also mean having two posts on weeks that big news breaks. But that’s the life of a writer, isn’t it?

Home Away From Home

The third biggest challenge for deadlines is all the other writing that I’m doing. I spend a lot of time taking briefings and such for Gestalt IT, which I affectionately refer to as my “Bruce Wayne” job. I get to hear a lot of fun stories and see a lot of great companies just starting out in the world. I write a lot over there because it’s how I keep up with the industry. Remember that year that I went crazy and wrote two posts every week for an entire year? Yeah, good times. Guess what? It’s going to be like that again!

Gestalt IT is going to be my writing source for most of my briefings and coverage of companies. It’s going to have a much different tone that this blog does. Here is when I’m going to spend more time pontificating and looking at big trends in technology. Or perhaps it will be stirring the pot. But I still plan on getting out one post a week about some topic. And I won’t be posting it on Friday unless I absolutely have to.

Tom’s Take

It’s no stretch to say that writing is something I do better than anything else. It’s also something I love to do. I want to do my best to keep bringing good content to everyone out there that likes to read my blog. I’m going to spend some time exploring new workflows and trying to keep the hits coming along as 2019 rolls around. I’ll have more to say on that in my usual January 1 post to kick off the new year!

Writing Is Hard

Posted on by
Reply

Writing isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do. There are a lot of times that people sit down to pour out their thoughts onto virtual paper and nothing happens. Or they spend hours and hours researching a topic only to put something together that falls apart because of assumptions about a key point that aren’t true.

The world is becoming more and more enamored with other forms of media. We like listening to podcasts instead of reading. We prefer short videos instead of long articles. Visual aids beat a wall of text any day. Even though each of these content types has a script it still feels better having a conversation. Informal chat beats formal prose every day.

Written Wringers

I got into blogging because my typing fingers are way more eloquent than the thoughts running through my brain. I had tons of ideas that I needed to put down on paper and the best way to do that was to build a simple blog and get to it. It’s been eight years of posting and I still feel like I have a ton to say. But it’s not easy to make the words flow all the time.

I find that my blogging issues boil down into two categories. The first is when there is nothing to write about. That’s how most people feel. They see the same problems over and over and there’s nothing to really discuss. The second issue is when a topic has been absolutely beaten to a pulp. SD-WAN is a great example. I’ve written a lot about SD-WAN in a bunch of places. And as exciting as the technology is for people implementing it for the first time, I feel like I’ve said everything there is to say about SD-WAN. I know that because it feels like the articles are all starting to sound the same.

There are some exciting new technologies on the horizon. 802.11ax is one of them. So too is the new crop of super fast Ethernet. We even have crazy stuff like silicon photonics and machine learning and AI invading everything we do. There’s a lot of great stuff just a little ways out there. But it’s all going to take research and time. And learning. And investment. And that takes time to suss everything out. Which means a lot of fodder for blog posts as people go through the learning process.

Paper Trail

The reason why blogging is still so exciting for me is because of all the searches that I get that land in my neighborhood. Thinks like fixing missing SFPs or sending calls directly to voicemail. These are real problems that people have that need to be solved.

As great as podcasts and video series are, they aren’t searchable. Sure, the show notes can be posted that discuss some of the topics in general. But those show notes are basically a blog post without prose. They’re a bullet point list of reference material and discussion points. That’s where blogs are still very important. They are the sum total of knowledge that we have in a form that people can see.

If you look at Egyptian hieroglyphs or even Ancient Greek writings you can see what their society is like. You get a feel for who they were. And you can read it because it was preserved over time. The daily conversations didn’t stand the test of time unless they were committed to memory somehow. Sure, podcasts and videos are a version of this as well, but they’re also very difficult to maintain.

Think back to all the video that you have that was recorded before YouTube existed. Think about all the recordings that exist on VHS, Super8, or even reel-to-reel tape. One of the biggest achievements of humanity was the manned landing on the moon in 1969. Now, just 50 years later we don’t have access to the video records of that landing. A few grainy copies of the records exist, but not the original media. However, the newspaper articles are still preserved in both printed and archive form. And those archives are searchable for all manner of information.

Tom’s Take

Written words are important. Because they will outlast us. As much as we’d like to believe that our videos are going to be our breakthrough and those funny podcasts are going to live forever, the truth is that people are going to forget our voices and faces long after we’re gone. Our words will live forever though. Because of archiving and searchability future generations will be able to read our thoughts just like we read those of philosophers and thinkers from years past. But in order to do that, we have to write.

Why Do You Still Blog?

Posted on by
2

After recording an excellent session on social media at Cisco Live with The Network Collective (@NetCollectivePC), I started thinking about blogging and where it stands in the grand scheme of information sharing. With the rise of podcasting and video blogging now in full swing, I was even asked by my friend Michael Stump “Do you see blogging as a dying form of content?” For obvious reasons, I said “no”, but I wanted to explain two major reasons why.

Needle In A Haystack

One of the major reasons why I still blog through written form is searchability. When I started blogging almost seven years ago I wanted to create a place where I could put down my thoughts about topics and share them with everyone. More by accident than design, many of those thoughts became popular topics of conversation. Even today, some of my posts are being used to help people figure out problems and address issues that aren’t well documented in other places.

But why? How can posts many years old still be relevant to audiences today? Because of searching. Use of Google, DuckDuckGo, and even Bing allow people to search for specific error messages or topics and find things that I’ve written down. That’s because text on posts is easily indexed by web crawlers. Even when my posts are excerpted on other sites it just drives more people back to my blog to find my content. The power of being able to find something can’t be understated.

But what about audio and video content? How can it be searched? Sure, you can write down show notes. But show notes are like network and systems documentation. At first, they’re very detailed and useful. But after time passes, they are essentially the bare minimum necessary to be able to move on. That makes it difficult to search for specific content inside of an episode. In fact, the show notes from most podcast episodes would be content for two blogs!

Additionally, the banter and discussion during the episode are hard to capture in text format. If the show notes mention that the guests spend 3-4 minutes talking about some topic, realize that most people speak in conversation at around 125 words per minute (wpm). With two guests debating the topic for 4 minutes, that’s 500 words or more on a topic! How can you capture the essence of the discussion in a single line show note with perhaps one or two links to outside material? Blogs allow all of that to be tracked, indexed, and referenced at a later date without needed to scrub through the audio to find out exactly what was said.

Can I Have Your Attention, Please?

If you’ve been reading along to this point so far, you know that I prefer writing my thoughts out. That is, if you’ve been paying attention. I also prefer reading words instead of podcasts for the most part. Why? Well, that has to do with my full and undivided attention.

When I’m reading something, I’m using my active reading skills. I’m focused the content in front of me. I use my attention to absorb the words and concepts. It does take a lot of concentration to do this. Since part of my job is reading blogs it’s easy for me to set aside time to do this task. But it does take away from other things that I’m doing. I often find myself shutting out other conversation or ignoring things going on around me while I try to digest new topics or evaluate someone’s opinion on a subject.

Conversely, when is the last time you actively listened to a podcast? I mean, you sat down with a pair of headphones and really listened to it? Not just put it on in the background and casually listened to the discussion while you went on with work or something else. I’d bet the answer is that you frequently find yourself splitting your attention. I know I do it. I even split my focus when I’m recording podcasts if they aren’t on video. It’s very easy to lose track of what’s going on without a visual focus point.

Podcasts are active. They project the conversation you. Likewise, the consumers of podcasts are passive. They aren’t seeking knowledge. They are being fed knowledge via an audio (or video) stream. But written words aren’t that aggressive. They require someone to consume them actively. You don’t accidentally click on a link and find yourself full of knowledge ten minutes later without having put in the effort to read what was on the page. You can’t read blog posts without paying attention. If you do, you find yourself missing the point and reading them all over again to find out what you missed in the first place.

Tom’s Take

I love to write. I never did when I was in school or when I was first starting out in technology, but as time has worn on, I find myself growing to love using a keyboard to share what’s in my brain. I’ve recorded podcasts and videos as well, but I keep coming back to the written word. I like the ability to have other people find my content useful years after the fact via a search or a referral. I also enjoy the idea that people are focused on what I’m saying and ingesting it actively instead of having it fed to them via a speaker or headphones. Maybe it’s because I use other media, like TV and music, to provide background noise to focus as I write and do other things. At the end of the day, I blog because it’s the method of communication I most prefer to consume.

Blogging By The Refrigerator’s Light

Posted on by
Reply

Blogging isn’t starting off to a good 2017 so far. Ev Williams announced that Medium is cutting back and trying to find new ways to engage readers. The platform of blogging is scaling back as clickbait headlines and other new forms of media capture the collective attention for the next six seconds. How does that all relate to the humble tech blogger?

Mindshare, Not Eyeshare

One of the reasons why things have gotten so crazy is the drive for page views. Clickbait headlines serve the singular purpose of getting someone to click on an article to register a page view. Ever clicked on some Top Ten article only to find that it’s actually a series of 10 pages in a slideshow format? Page views. I’ve even gone so far as to see an article of top 7 somethings broken down into 33(!) pages, each with 19 ads and about 14 words.

Writers competing for eyeballs are always going to lose in the end. Because the attention span of the average human doesn’t dally long enough to make a difference. Think of yourself in a crowded room. Your eyes dart back and forth and all around trying to find something in the crowd. You may not even know what you’re looking for. But you’ll know it when you see it. Your attention wanders as you scan through the crowd.

Blogging, on the other hand, is like finding a good conversation in the crowd. It engages the mind. It causes deeper thinking and engagement that leads to lasting results. The best blog posts don’t have thousands of views in the first week followed by little to nothing for the rest of eternity. They have active commenters. They have response pieces. They have page views and search results that get traffic years after publication.

The 3am Ah Ha Moments

Good blogs shouldn’t just be about “going viral”. Good blogs should have something called Fridge Brilliance. Simply put, the best blogs hit you out of the blue a day after you read it standing in front of your fridge door. BANG. Now you get it! You run off to see how it applies to what you’re doing or even to give your perspective on things.

The mark of a truly successful blog is creating something that lasts and is memorable in the minds of readers. Even if all you’re really known for is “that one post” or a series of great articles, you’ve made an impression. And, as I’ve said before, you can never tell which post is going to hit it big. So the key is to keep writing what you write and making sure you’re engaging your audience at a deeper level than their corneas.

That’s not to say that you can’t have fun with blog posts now and then or post silly things here and there. But if you really want to be known as an authoritative source of content, you have to stay consistent. One of the things that Dave Henry (@DaveMHenry) saw in his 2016 wrap-up was that his most viewed posts were all about product announcements. Those tend to get lots of headlines, but for an independent blog it’s just as much about the perspective the writer lends as it is for the news itself. That’s how you can continue to engage people beyond the eyeball and into the brain.

Tom’s Take

I’ve noticed that people still like to write. They want to share thoughts. But they pick the wrong platforms. They want eyeballs instead of minds. They don’t want deep thoughts. They just want an audience. That’s the wrong way to look at it. You want engagement. You want disagreement and argument and 4,000 word response posts about why you’re completely wrong. Because that’s how you know you’ve hooked the reader. You’re a splinter in their mind that won’t go away. That’s the real draw. Keep your page views. I’d rather have memories and fridge brilliance instead.