I guess I should start blogging again ;-)

• Whoever comes are the right people
• Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
• Whenever it starts is the right time
• When it’s over, it’s over

This means the participants of the conference run the show. It’s very Agile and open-ended. If you don’t like a session you’re in, you vote with your feet: go find another session to attend. After keynotes by Chris Baggott (CEO of Compendium Blogware), Kevin Makice and Doug Karr, suggestions were made for breakout sessions. Topics included:

• Blogging 101
• Blogging on Smaller Indiana
• Political action blogging
• SEO and RSS
• Monetizing your blog
• WordPress tips and tricks
• Writing effectively
• Business blogging
• Video blogging
• Identifying local bloggers

I bought a new Flip Video camera and caught some video:

What I learned

One of the main points of attending a conference is learning. A few take-aways for me:

• Video blogging is easier than it looks.
• Both in video blogging and blogging in general, perfect is the enemy of good. Just get it out there.
• Blogging is about spheres of influence. We have different areas where we have conversations and things ripple out from there. Each person should feel comfortable sharing what they know in their sphere. It may be duplicate within one sphere but completely new in another.
• In order to build up the Indiana blogging community, we need to blog about Indiana.
• Finding other local bloggers is challenging.
• I suck as a live-blogger. I’m too interested in the topic to take notes I’m willing to post immediately.

BlogIN isn’t the only event happening in Indiana on the topic of blogging. In August there is a 2-day blogging event called Blog Indiana happening on August 16-17. I think many bloggers from BlogIN are excited to have another opportunity to talk shop here in Indianapolis.

In his session (which I understand ran straight through the second breakout), he showed us how he goes through the process of editing video.

Highlights:

• 2-3 minutes is the right length.  How short can you make a video?
• Point and shoot cameras are less intimidating than a video camera.
• Microsoft Movie Maker is the easiest way to do this in the Windows world.

My biggest takeaway from this session is that video blogging in the "YouTube generation" doesn’t need to be a highly produced affair.  It’s not the Super Bowl. Let’s just get the video out there. Don’t worry about how professional it is.

I’m here at the Smaller Indiana blogging unconference, BlogIN. We’ve been through the keynotes, two break-out sessions, and are now in the third. I’m a horrible live blogger, apparently. Granted, I hosted a "Blogging 101" session, so I didn’t take many notes in that one. For the keynotes, Chris Baggot, Kevin Makice, and Douglas Karr talked about their blogging experiences. Here’s the few chicken-scratch notes I took in the keynotes.

Chris Baggott

Chris has been blogging since late 2000. His main motivations were, honestly, selfish: He felt he had ideas worth hearing.

Had some goals … you should have goals too.

Employees are 5 times more credible as bloggers than the CEO.

How do you measure conversion in corporate blogging. That’s the important thing.

Kevin Makice

(blogshmog.net)

Kevin has been writing a personal blog since 1999. Started doing this as a way to introduce the world to his son (or was it vise versa?).

He uses his blog to build connections with other people.

What’s great about blogging is that it connects lots of different people providing lots of different perspective.  No one has the right answer and that makes it powerful.

Blogging is about transparency.

Need to understand that blogging is something that is a new medium.  You should not be afraid to make mistakes and learn from the best.

Douglas Karr

Google is essentially the web.

Blogging is about spheres of influence  We have different areas where we have conversations and things ripple out from there.

Analogy of Burj Dubai building – blogs are built on a wide base.

Some advantages of blogging:

• Transparency
• Consistency
• Passion
• Participate
• Momentum – steady consistent effort.
• Committee
• Coordination
• Measurement

Disadvantages to blogging:

• Transparency
• Time
• Hypocrisy
• Anonymity
• Conflict
• Measures

Why does he blog? For fulfillment and answering questions for other people.  "Great podium to communicate with people I’m already connected to."

What I hope to get out of BlogIN

• Specific Blog or Frequent Blog

  I’m curious about the philosophy others have on topical blogs. I can think of about 10 topics I’d like to write about. These are very diverse in nature, so it would seem to make sense to create a separate blog. With limited time to blog, each blog would, I guess, get updated infrequently – perhaps once or twice in a two week period. On the other hand, a single site would get updated more frequently, but lacks a specific audience. I’d like to know the thoughts of the pros on which direction is better to take.

• Blogger Workflow

  My blog workflow, recently throw together, is pretty simple. I write topics in a Moleskine Cahier Notebook. I write the post then cross them out in the journal. I have more ideas than time to write, therefore there are a lot of useless post ideas there. My blogging time is usually in the afternoon, in the 40 minutes I have between picking up the kids. I might blog in the evening or on weekends if I’m particularly energized (and can find a little time). I’d like to know how other bloggers set up their schedule, how they make time to blog and how they track their ideas.

• Blogging Commitment

  Somewhat related to the previous point, I’d like to know how much time my fellow bloggers spend researching, writing and maintaining their blogs. The magic number in my head is about 3 hours per week, but I’m curious about other bloggers’ commitments. I’m curious about the number of posts per week as well.  Do bloggers write many short posts, or less-frequent but longer articles?

• Blogging Locally

  My current blogs reach two main audiences: First, friends and family; second, potential customers of my consulting business. Occasionally (like this post), I find myself covering local events in the Indianapolis area. Are local events common to personal and business blogs, or do most bloggers ignore the local unless considerably pertinent to their niche?

• Blog++

  I’m curious how many bloggers do more than just blog. How many do podcast, screencasts, and video blogging? Do they have photoblogs, and how much do they use Twitter? Is a written-word blog only part of a well-rounded blogger’s repertoire?

• One for the money, two for the show

  It’s clear to me that good blogs are written by people with a passion. It’s difficult to be a mercenary blogger. I’m curious, though, about how many bloggers find themselves blogging about a passion with the intent of making money.

Those were just a few thoughts I figured I get out there.  I hope I can offer some of the advice I do have about blogging as well, but I have to wait for the other attendees to ask the questions first. See you there!

I took most of 2005 off from blogging, perhaps I wasn’t that hardcore.  The hiatus was good, but eventually I got the bug to write again. I decided to move to true blog software and installed WordPress.  My hopes for longer, more meaningful posts didn’t quite work out the way I had hoped.  Recently, my blog has basically turned into a backup of my Twitter account.

What makes an expert?

At the BlogMOB, I had a chance to talk to several other bloggers and would-be bloggers.  I was sitting next to Erin Monahan.  She is a Smaller Indiana member who is a budding blogger (recently upgraded from wannabe) who stepped out of her comfort zone and onto the steps of Monument Circle where she got a chance to get the opinions of fellow bloggers:

[W]hat better place to gain insight and inspiration than surrounded by a bunch of pros? Lucky for me, Erik Deckers, John Uhri and Joe Dager graciously shared their wisdom and helped me understand how blogging can be a viable form of business (and personal) communication."

I’m flattered she considered me a "pro", although I think I may be out of league in comparison to Erik and Joe. I’ve blogged a long time, but never in quantity. That leaves the question in my mind of whether or not I can be labeled an expert. I can say with some confidence that I understand what it takes to be a blogger.  Perhaps those who can’t do, teach?

Time is on my side… or not

Clearly the biggest obstacle to any blogger’s success is putting in the time. Pro-bloggers like Darrin Rowse have made a full time gig out of blogging, but the professionals are a minority. Most don’t have the income streams to spend their entire day blogging. Still, even part time bloggers spend quite a bit of time working on their blogs.

Steve Pavlina is a blogger and personal productivity maven has said he spends about 10 hours on a long post (sorry, no reference on that one), but has also said he spends 3-4 hours a day working on his blog that results in 2-4 posts (which works out to be about right).  Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror has mentioned spending about 3 hours a day writing. I got a chance to talk to Erik Deckers at the blogMob, and he invests about 3-4 hours writing his weekly humor column. I hope to query some other bloggers about their time commitments at the actual blogIN event, but it seems that 3 is truly a magic number for bloggers.

I am a blogger, here me roar

I’m going to get back into it.  I want to be a blogger, and I’m going to put in the time to get it done.  I’m excited to have connected with a group of people who are passionate about blogging, no matter the topic.  It has renewed my inspiration and gotten me excited about the possibilities.  I’m converting some of my "down time" moments to focus on blogging and have some ideas of what I want to write about.  More to follow.

BlogIN – An Indiana Blogger’s Conference

Remember, if you live in Indiana and want to learn more about blogging, the BlogIN unconference is coming up on April 26th from 1-5pm.  The best and brightest Indiana bloggers will be there to share their knowledge.  I’m excited about the free-form agenda where attendees determine the topics to be discussed.  For $20, the price can’t be beat.  Register today!

What’s your personal mission statement?

I need to answer this question in two parts. There is a personal side and a business side that plays into the personal.

I believe that my personal mission statement is to “Love God and Love Others”. It’s biblical and comes from Luke 10:27. Most of the time I think I fail at this at least by my own expectations. I have those moments where I think “wow, did I treat that guy like a jerk.” I know this isn’t an all-or-nothing thing, but a continuum on which I am always pressing forward. Still I hold myself to a high standard.

The question is: can this also be reflected in a business setting? I believe that yes, it can. I think it is possible to provide services that solve business problems while still maintaining a level of integrity that shows my Christian world view. I can be upright in my business dealings while still making an income. That philosophy allows me to do both.

What’s the biggest mess you’ve dealt with this year?

As a software developer code is the biggest mess I deal with. Many times it is code written by others, but the biggest mess I cleaned up this year was my own. A client asked me to build a custom query to search their customer and vehicle records. By the time I finished it was 23 printed pages. It was a monster but it was fast. Unfortunately, I misinterpreted the spec while developing using a ClientId instead of a CustomerId. They weren’t interchangeable, it seemed. My mistake wasn’t noticed until testing and fixing the reported bug turned out to be a big headache. For whatever reason when I was making the change cut-and-paste didn’t catch all the references and I had to do add some joins to get it to work correctly. I spent an inordinate amount of time debugging and fixing the query. In the end it worked, but the actual cost for that component was about 4 times their original budget.

What current entrepreneurial efforts consume your time?

Getting my billables up for current clients have been the extent of my entrepreneurial efforts lately. I’ve gotten set up in my new office and I am just trying to get back up to speed for the new year.

As far as efforts upcoming, I’m looking into building my network here in the Indianapolis area. I got Book Yourself Solid, by Michael Porter, as a Christmas present and I plan on going through the book in detail to help me with my networking efforts.

As I’ve been surfing the internet recently I’ve found quite a few different resources all related to small business in Indianapolis. It’s pretty friendly here in terms of small business, which is great news for me. The opportunities are here, I simply need to take advantage of them.

Why do you do what you do? What inspires you? When do you get most excited?

I fell in love with computers during the summer between fifth and sixth grade. It’s been a love affair with computers pretty much since. Late in high school and early in college, though, I started taking an interest in journalism and writing. Once in college I lost interest in that field and returned to computers. In late 1994, I discovered the Internet and a niche that covered both a writing / publishing medium and computers. A match made in heaven! Seeing the cool things other people come up with as a solution to a problem gets me excited. I love seeing the results of a solution to a problem.

Boxers or Briefs?

That’s a rather personal question but I’ll take the middle of the road and say “boxer briefs”.

What do you do when you’re not programming?

I don’t do nearly enough when I’m not programming. I’m a Dad, so most of my non-work time is focused around being a parent. That means dinner, errands, soccer practice. I used to like watching movies but always feel like there’s a better use of my time. I like to read but in the last few years I’ve lost interest in reading fiction. I just need to find some new authors to read, or convince William Gibson to write faster.

What one thing made the biggest difference when getting started?

Again a two part answer.

First, The Wife. Had she not seen how miserable I was at the 9-to-5 and encouraged me to go independent, I probably never would have. Knowing I had the full support of my wife made the transition so much easier.

Second, being marketable. I started my own shop in August 2006 but that was after having interviewed with several other consulting companies in town. After those conversations, I realized my skills were marketable but I wasn’t compelled to make a switch in jobs for essentially the same thing I was already doing. I was comfortable where I was. Why switch? Knowing I could get some consulting gigs with my skill set set my mind at ease. Once I made the actual jump, the contacts I had made provided my first contracts.

What’s your exit strategy?

Since I’m independent, my exit strategy is to stop doing this when I’m tired of doing it. That’s the freedom of not having any assets on which I need a return of investment. I’ll just wrap up my work for my last client and shut off the lights, as it were.

What is the last thing that made you belly laugh?

Talking to my either of my sisters always cracks me up… we genuinely love each other and all have the same dorky sense of humor passed down to us from our grandfather.

Have you ever been in business before?

My sisters and I sold pet rocks at the end of our driveway when we were kids. Our dad still has the one that looks like him. In sixth grade I started a company with my best friend to sell hand-drawn pictures of semi trucks and computer programs (so much for niches). We had 0 sales before shutting down operations but it was fun dreaming anyway.

At what point do you consider yourself successful?

Success is a moving target for a business. As soon as a company is successful it needs to redefine what success is or it will die. For me, success would be having great customers that love my work and hunt me down to do work for them. I want the long wow, the place where I have impressed my customers over and over again leaving no question about who will help them solve their business problems.

What was your first experience with a computer?

My mom was a very wise woman. She signed her kids up for various different things to give us a chance to try out things we were interested in. I took a puppet-making class, had guitar lessons and a computer programming class. I remember thinking it was a dumb idea but she insisted that computers were the way of the future. Turns out she was right and I loved the class so much I took a second class that same summer. The classes were programming BASIC on Apple ][s. As a sixth grader we were introduced to writing programs in BASIC. While most of the class spend computer lab time typing in a program, I provided the source code and goofed off writing other programs during that time instead.

Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates in a jello wrestling match, where’s your money?

Bill Gates. While Steve is still considering the aesthetics of the Jell-O color, Bill will knock off his block like Windows has knocked off the the Mac UI.

Where do you do your best thinking?

I wish I could say it was something clever, but really my best thinking is done in front of the computer first thing in the morning. It’s usually then that I have let go of the things that worry me and can clearly look for the solution I seek. Back in the day I used to get my good ideas in the shower and anywhere else. But that also meant I couldn’t sleep at night. I had to change my habits to get some shuteye. Now I only think when I have to. Its pretty anti-entrepreneurial, don’t you think?

What does your average daily work / life balance look like? How much time do you work, play and sleep?

Lately, my schedule has primarily been based around our family. We recently moved to a new city and I’ve occupied most of my time with the details of making that happen. It means I haven’t worked nearly as much as before (a benefit of freelancing, I suppose). Before, I was working about 38 hours a week and then spending time running our boys to their events. I don’t play nearly as much as I should. Mostly I spend my evenings stressing about my “todo” list and how very little of it I accomplished that day. I need to lighten up. I sleep about 7 hours a night. Sometimes I powernap during the day.

If I could introduce you to anyone, who would it be?

I used to be a huge fan of the band Megadeth, but that changed while waiting in line by the tour bus to talk to Dave Mustaine. He was kind of rude to his fans, making demands like telling people they couldn’t smoke while waiting in the cold. I didn’t smoke, but that seemed like a pretty snobby request. After that I realized that everyone in the world is pretty much an equal: We’re all born, we live a bit, then we die. Where we go after that depends greatly on the choice we’ve made. So meeting anyone in particular doesn’t impress me much anymore. There are several bloggers out there that I respect very much. Someday, I’d like to run into them to chat. If I don’t, that’s fine with me too.

What stops you from giving up when you are frustrated?

A good night’s sleep. Once I hit a point of frustration, the best thing I can do is take a few hours to recuperate. Things don’t seem nearly as grim in the morning, and I have that fresh perspective I need to get things done.

If Chuck Norris and Steven Hawking had a baby (hey it’s my damn interview), would you vote for her for president?

No, I would vote for Ron Paul.

One more thought… I had switched to Jaiku for a bit, but it seems that service never really caught on. Most of the people I was following never made the transition, and Jaiku hadn’t gotten a short code for posting via SMS. Twitter seems to have resolved a number of their scaling issues (haven’t seen the cats in a while), so I’ve been pretty satisfied with them lately.

At the time, I passed on purchasing Getting Real. Recently, Fried and the gang have offered an html version of their book for free on their website. Sales must have tapered off or something. I read through it over the last few nights, and my review is as follows:

I paid nothing for it, and got what I paid for.

The book is simply a bunch of essays stitched together by the thread of marketing their products to their readers. Nothing in the book is new or particularly revolutionary. Some things are even scary… like working without any sort of a spec. As they admit, web apps aren’t the same as designing software for NASA, but there’s still a use for some documentation – like thinking through problems before you start solving them. Communicating with your customers and building some buzz ahead of launch make sense. That’s pretty much the playbook for the rest of the Web 2.0 followers.

Over all, it was worth reading, but had I plunked down $19 for the PDF, I would have been highly disappointed.