The Effective CIO

Shifting Gears March 3, 2010

Faithful readers may have noticed that their faith has not been rewarded for the past month: there’s been nothing new to read here for quite some time.  That was intentional, but it’s now time to explain myself a bit.

I started this blog more than two years ago as a way to understand the technology. After intermittent posts for eight months or so I began writing in earnest, posting articles every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for more than a year.  245 articles and 125,000 words later, it was time to take a breather.

When I started writing, I had many things I wanted to talk about.  Typically, I had articles written two weeks in advance.  Over time, that lead time began to shrink, so that most recently I was writing the night before my self-imposed deadlines.  That resulted in rushed, poor-quality posts, which I won’t have and you don’t deserve.

I also realized that many of my topics are timeless.  On more than one occasion, I would write a post only to discover that I had written essentially the same article a year ago.  Rehashing the same topic serves no one.

Finally, I began to consider topics that really need more than 500 words, the typical length of an entry on this blog.  I prefer “short and sweet” articles; I know that I get turned off by enormous blog postings.  Nonetheless, certain topics deserve more scrutiny, and my current format does not serve these topics well.

On February 1, I just stopped posting.  I had meant to write this explanatory post soon thereafter, but became intrigued by the traffic behavior on my blog.  Instead, I stayed quiet to see what happens when a blog goes silent.  I was surprised to see that traffic takes a long time to dwindle. I don’t completely understand why, but it has caused me to rethink the impact of posting frequency and readership patterns.

So now what?  I will confess that my initial angst over stopping has been replaced by a sense of relief from not having to post.  I’ve been able to consider some more in-depth ideas (many in the area of cloud technologies and shifts in personal computing) that may result in longer, more detailed posts.  I’ve also been able to rebuild my supply of “short post” ideas, which I can draw on as the need arises.

It has become clear that every blogger needs an exit strategy, and that mine was ill-formed at best.  While I do intend to resume blogging at some point, I need to think about a real long-term strategy that will allow the content to continue to serve as a resource for those who are interested.

The best part of blogging has been the feedback and support from many, many people.  I appreciate your time when you read, and I really appreciate those who comment and extend the conversations I’ve started.  I hope you’ll continue to check back to see what I’m doing, and I hope to continue to provide value to you when my blogging becomes more frequent.  Until then, feel free to search for useful stuff I’ve already written, and don’t hesitate to connect through my Twitter presence. This experiment continues, and there’s still a lot to learn…