I have a confession.
I can feel that ol’ “buy a new domain name, dump the current one” feeling setting in. It’s inevitable. I get bored, and I think, if I just grasped this exciting new idea, and ran with it, I’d have the next big thing. This ol’ blog? No one’s reading it anyway right?
However, I can no longer claim ignorance – I know the way to build a valuable blog is to actually keep working at it, even when I feel exhausted of ideas.
So. I’m into technical communication and web design. Those are the things I love to do. Should I start writing about them here? Is there enough of a space to apply usability and experience concepts with good ol’ XHTML and CSS? Is there a way to introduce colour theory and show how to apply it in code? And should I bother?
What about technical communications? Should I dig in, share more about XML and DITA and why they’re so exciting? Should I learn about agile methodology and share what I learn? Should I grab onto Flex or .Net and make them a part of this site too?
It’s interesting because, although I want to make a valuable site, I’m not particularly interested in monetization. Yet by virtue of posting online I have to wonder, don’t I have the responsibility to post something valuable and worthwhile? Is it really fair to just litter my site with whatever crappy thoughts wander through my brain? At what point is it less about interest and excitement and more about marketing? When will I cross my own ethical line anyway?
I was in a webinar yesterday that discussed user-centric principles in technical documentation, where the speaker from IBM applied theory to examples and proposed an interesting way of building documentation. While DITA was mentioned, I was surprised to learn neither DITA nor XML single-sourcing as a whole are widely and fully accepted. Here I thought I was lightyears behind by not knowing them. So is there space for me to write about tech writing in the user experience field? Can I say something that Tom Johnson hasn’t already written better?
I don’t want to take the value here down, but I’m sure the lack of posting isn’t increasing quality either. So, web design or technical communication in UX?
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
amber 10.24.08 at 2:03 pm
Design is part of UX. So is content. Technical communication may be, it depends.
However, my real answer is: write what interests you. It’s natural that your interests may deviate to some degree from the interests of your readers, and as long as they see something more or less of value, they’ll stay. But if you don’t write, or write things you don’t love or aren’t interested in *only*, then *you’ll* lose interest, and that’s worse.
That’s why I ended up reconsolidating BN and TP. In order to keep myself interested, I had to write what I felt no matter for which blog. Better th leave it all together, then.
jamEs 10.24.08 at 2:05 pm
I would suggest blog about what you’re interested in. Maybe you have too narrow focused your topic, but there is no real reason why you can’t broaden it. A blog is essentially what you make it and the only way you really get anywhere with it is to be enthusiastic about what you’re talking about. I understand your conundrum, I have a blog that is a lot more diverse in topic, yet there are still things I don’t think would interest my audience. All the stuff you mentioned seems like it could easily fit into the scope of your site.