About this site
Originally published: 12/29/2002; 10:53:17 PM
Most of this page assumes you are a friend, family member, or coworker who has had little, if any, exposure to a web log. If you are already familiar with web logs, you can skip the blog basics to learn about the subject area of this web log.
This site is my personal web log or “blog”. Blogs have been around for awhile but are gaining popularity, primarily due to how easy/cheap/powerful personal web publishing with a blogging tool can be. Some colleagues and I are experimenting with blogs–and in particular a tool called Radio Userland. Like others, we believe a blog may be an effective knowledge management tool that could be leveraged by corporations to form efficient knowledge networks.
What’s the different between a blog and a personal web site?
The content might not be much different but the way it is published is very different. Without a blog, if you want to publish your own web site, you’ve got to use an HTML authoring tool or, if you know HTML, you can use a simple text editor. The files have to be built and then moved to your web server. If you want to maintain a consistent look-and-feel across all of your pages, you have to do it manually, use a tool that handles it for you, or develop the functionality yourself. In addition, there is no built-in mechanism for letting others know about your content (syndication) or for pulling together content from various sources around the net (aggregation). Sites managed in this way tend to become stagnant because of the amount of effort invovled in keeping them up-to-date.
On a small scale, managing a personal site using authoring tools or homegrown utilities might be doable for some but it does not scale. When corporations manage sites in this manner they quickly find this out. Thus was born a market called Content Management, Web Content Management, or Enterprise Content Management. Companies will pay six and seven figures for the software alone to solve this problem (many of my projects over the last seven years have been developing or implementing these systems).
A blogging tool like Radio Userland is like a personal content management system. It handles the standardized look-and-feel, templating (allowing users to enter content without knowing HTML via a web browser), syndication, aggregation, and publishing automatically, without the technical headaches or the price tag. With Radio, I can fire up my laptop, enter content through my web browser (even without a network connection), and Radio handles the rest. The tool and the site hosting costs $40 a year.
If you find yourself spending a lot of time surfing news headlines on various sites on the web, content aggregation is for you. Further, if you find yourself forwarding those links from time-to-time to a circle of friends and/or colleagues, you need a blog. Instead of scanning many sites and then sending that one piece of content, say competitive information or market analysis or somesuch, out to a wide distribution list via email, using a blogging tool you would:
- Scan an aggregated list of headlines from sites you subscribe to (Getting a subscription is a matter of pointing your news aggregator tool to the RSS feed produced by the site you want to subscribe to. Many of these feeds are freely-available.) More on RSS feeds appears below.
- Follow a headline link to read an article
- Finding it interesting you would then post a link to the article and add comments (one button click from the news headline list)
- And finally publish your entry (one more click) to your blog which is then automatically syndicated to everyone else who has included your blog in their list of aggregated news feeds and so on and so on.
This may be a more efficient way to share knowledge because people can fine tune the information feeds they receive and possibly even reduce the clutter and chaos of the email inbox.
I’ve got several categories set up and I try to categorize each of my posts. Some of my categories are meant only for my fellow employees. Radio automatically sends that content to an internal web server. The rest of the content goes to the web server hosted by Userland. Content is typically either a “post” or a “story”. A post is like a journal entry. It gets categorized and shows up in the news feed. A story is usually longer and less temporal–ie, it doesn’t necessarily fit into or depend upon the ongoing journal entries.
How is content shared?
Blogs make their content available in a couple of different ways. One is through HTML or web pages like the one you are viewing now. Another is through a format called RSS. This format allows the content to be syndicated to interested readers. It works like a newswire. Readers can subscribe to the whole blog or just categories within the blog they are interested in. The tool a reader uses to subscribe is up to them–as long as it can “consume” RSS feeds, it doesn’t matter. When I post a new entry, their tool picks up the entry and “aggregates” the headline with news feeds from other blogs or news feeds.
When users post entries and subscribe to each others’ news feeds, it creates a knowledge network based on the interests of the parties involved. People are (obviously) free to join or leave the community at their whim simply by subscribing or unsubscribing to or from the news feed.
Some blogs are very focused and others are not. For now, my blog is about anything and everything. I may pick something to focus on eventually. Until then, readers are free to subscribe only to the categories they are interested in.
In general my posts will obviously reflect my personal and professional interests which are both broad and deep. I’m a consultant at a small firm (85 people) focused on Corporate Performance Management. Basically, we help Fortune 500 companies make better decisions, faster. Our engagements can be strategic in nature where we are valued as trusted advisors to C-level executives. And they can be tactical where our technical skills implementing knowledge management and business intelligence solutions is well-respected. I lead the Architecture practice at the firm. Me and my folks are usually involved with assessments or technical architect roles.
On the personal side, I do not intend for this blog to become an online diary. I do like to give opinions, random thoughts, and recommendations on
- Music: Let’s help each other fight the tendency to let commercial radio dictate our musical tastes. Do yourself a favor and wipe out all of your presets except the one that points to public radio. It takes work to explore and broaden your musical horizons but it is worth it.
- Movies: If you don’t think the Cohen brothers are geniuses or if you’ve never seen an indie film, you and I may not have a lot of common ground here. Try something different. Discover your local art house.
- Books: By and large, I’ve been on a massive maritime binge. My list of oceangoing books I’ve read recently is at Amazon. Every once in a while I’ll throw in a historical novel, a non-naval adventure, or a management/leadership book but I can’t seem to tear myself away from the tall ship stuff.
- Outdoors: I love to be outdoors. Diving, sailing, camping, backcountry hiking, climbing. It’s all good. I don’t do enough of any of it.
- Family: I’ve got two kids that are (of course) the funniest and cutest kids alive and a beautiful wife that holds it all together. All three of them amaze me every day. I’m also lucky to have immediate family nearby and we always have fun.
That’s about it. Hopefully this gives you a feel for what blogs are, their potential, and what this one’s about. We’ll see where it goes.
– Jeff