When I decided to become a blogger this year I had only a general idea of why I was doing it, a hope that what I had to say would be interesting to others, and no idea at all on how it would impact me.
Last week I made my 100th post so this a good time to take a look back and consider the impact.
A few weeks in I concluded that if I was going to do this I should post something every day. I have gravitated towards this discipline, and it does not seem like a chore. I like to write and trying not to spend too much time is a much larger focus for me than trying to get motivated to write.
Along the way I did my best to articulate why I write and posted it on the About Me page. Those reasons are still valid, but I find I write mostly for myself with the hope that others will find my thoughts interesting. I do not think I am very interesting when I try to write for the audience.
As you can see in the chart, my readership is growing and it looks like I will have somewhere over 600 unique visitors in April. I did not have any specific expectations on traffic, so I really don't know if these are good numbers or not. Only a handful of people have posted comments on the site, which is certainly below what I expected. The chart does not show subscribers, but I am now up to 10 people that subscribe to the RSS feed -- this number also strikes me as low.
After reviewing my work I have to say that there are only a couple of items that really push forward interesting ideas.
Do We Want China to Fail? I think we are locked in a very interesting battle with China and I have written often about how we need to remember that China is a competitor that we need to be worried about. Even so, I do think we will be worse off if China fails in its effort to raise the living standards of its enormous population. So we need to watch out for ourselves lest China eat our lunch, but at the same time we should not wish for China to fail.
Sales vs. Engineering: In this post I take a look at a few companies and try to evaluate their thinking between the relative value of R&D spending and Sales and Marketing spending. If you could hire one more person, would it be an engineer or a salesperson?
How Much to Pay the Guy Driving: This turns out to be one of my favorite posts because it takes an idea I have been thinking about for a long time and puts it into a context that is relevant in today's debate. I try to tell myself every day that "there must be a better way" and searching for those improvements is the best part of my job.
The Timid Need Not Apply: I probably had more fun writing this post than any other. We were getting our minds prepped for a family trip to New York City and watched Man on Wire, the documentary about Philippe Petit's amazing high wire performance between the twin towers in 1974. The confluence of daring, creativity, and passion seemed so relevant to our business.
I hope my next 100 posts will be more like these few nuggets.