My blog and me
In a previous life - specifically the one I had before I joined Microsoft, I found that blogging was fun. It was great to get my thoughts out there and see what everyone else thought about it.
However, since I started at Microsoft, I've been in a rut blog-wize. I think my blogging has gone down hill, and thats a bummer - both for me and for my readers. I've become more of a linker than a thinker (as Sean put it to me a couple days ago).
I've been thinking about this and I've come up some reasons why.
- I'm a MS employee and what I say reflects on MS. This means that I need to be much more thoughtful about what I say - which is a skill I'm, err, developing. :-)
- My exposure is much greater now than it used to be, meaning I get more hits, but they are not all from the same thinking stable as me. This is good and bad - it challenges my thinking (good) but takes more of my time(bad). When I'm time constrained it's hard to respond correctly and I've screwed up some of the comments I've made here as a result. Not good.
- I used to be a subject matter expert, but now my perceived expertise has declined because I'm now across more (the generalist vs specialist argument). I think I'd rather focus my blog on what I do well, but I cant do that in my work blog - as my audience has wider needs now - because my audience is part of my job.
- I love creating content - But I just dont have the time now to create content like I used to. In addition, not being a SME (see item 3) means that I'm less likely to create content as my job is breadth focused not depth focused.
So what do I do? I want to keep blogging, but I want it to be fun, and I want it to be free from concerns and easy on my time and useful - to someone at least.
What would you do? (I ask after complaining of not enough time to deal with lots of comments). Comment either here on on your blog (and link here so I can track it).