Month: December 2012

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I miss blogs

The number of long form blog post have been declining for years. Most speculate that it’s because most of us spend more time microblogging on Twitter and Facebook. Certainly, when I started blogging in 2004, I blogged a lot of things that I would only tweet now. In November 2010, Jeff Bercovici wrote on Forbes:

53 percent of hobbyist bloggers say they update their blogs either somewhat less or a lot less than they have in the past. […]

Those who say they’re blogging less often were then asked to say why. While the most popular answer was “work/family commitments,” the next two most common choices were “I am devoting more time to microblogging (eg. Twitter)” and “I am devoting more time to social networks.”

I think it took a bit longer for that trend to happen in open source software and my technology blogs, but it has come. I found myself really missing good blog posts by independent individuals and decided to see if it was my imagination, or if I really was reading less blog posts than I used to and here’s what I found on my two favorite planets: (Numbers not 100% accurate.)

BlogPostFrequency

While I didn’t have a good way to measure microblogging numbers by the same authors as were in Planet, I do know that most of the people whose blog posts I miss are regularly posting on Facebook or Twitter.

The thing is, I miss reading all those blog posts. I’ve tried looking for more blogs to follow but not been really successful at finding new ones. I’ve tried reading more nonfiction books but books don’t provide the same type of thought food or blog ideas as blog posts do. Neither do tweets or Facebook posts.

At the same time, I have to admit my own blogging has gone down drastically from an average of 6 blog posts a month in early 2011 to an average of maybe 1 a month now.

It’s possible that microblogging is a better medium for the 5 blog posts a month that I now tweet instead of writing. And that the one post a month I write is the only one that should have been in long form to begin with. But I don’t think so. I think I am just sharing less well thought out ideas.

What do you think? Do you miss blogging? Have you noticed the decline of blog posts? Do you miss them?

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Offsites, robots & trees

During the past week I’ve had work, play, family, friends, interesting dialogue, …

  • I attended two Mozilla offsites last week. Offsites are are in person meetings that last between a day and a week. Different teams at Mozilla have been using them differently and I still think we’re working out the perfect format but meeting in person once in a while seems to be essential. (Many open source software projects have some sort of annual meeting as well as smaller get togethers.) In my experience in person meetings are really good for team building and at a decision points in the project. And because you don’t always know when you’ll be stuck on a decision, I think holding them regularly helps. Holding them too often can hurt productivity as most of the team has to travel, so there’s some balance to be found and it depends on where the project is.
  • At the Mozilla Engagement leads offsite we went over goals, budget and hiring for 2013. My group is publishing their goals and projects on the Mozilla wiki … for example, you can discuss the MDN 2013 goals and you can see the Firefox OS work that the evangelist team is working on.  We also established that the overall Mozilla Engagement team is very globally diverse. While we have quite a few people in California, our team is spread around the world. (We now have 4 that I know of in Colorado!)
  • At the Mozilla Apps Leads offsite we had discussions about apps, Android, Firefox OS, Marketplace, developers, … more about that coming out later.
  • I then got a scare … an email that said my flight would likely be over 4 hours late and might be cancelled due to the rains in the San Francisco area. I got home alright but I wish I could have transported the rain home as well.
  • We went on our annual Christmas tree pilgrimage. We found a terrific tree – aided by the fact that we didn’t have to wade through deep snow. For the first time in 10 years, there was no snow on the ground in December in our mountains. Things are not looking good for our forests next year. Not only was it extremely dry, there was a lot of beetle kill (i.e. dead trees) and there were active fires just a few miles south. So the tree was easy to find. Hauling it out without a sled proved to be a bit more difficult … (I also thought they should have asked everyone to bring out a couple of beetle kill trees while we were there, but I’m sure making changes like that to US forest policy would take a bit.)
  • We attended a fundraiser for Colorado nonprofits held at our local brewery – our youngest was delighted to get a root beer in a bottle. We got to visit with friends that work and volunteer at CASA and ELTC. As you buy your Christmas gifts this year, don’t forget your nonprofits – whether they are your local nonprofits or your favorite open source software supporting nonprofit!
  • Kids on Computers is planning our next set of schools. We’re working on getting computers to a new school in Oaxaca as well as expanding to two new schools in India! We had a meeting last night and it looks like the India schools will get set up in the spring. The computers for the India schools will be funded in large part by a grant we got from Yahoo!
  • Several interesting discussions about Firefox OS and how and when to get developers phones to try it out. I’m very excited about Mozilla moving into mobile. There was a really interesting article by Giga about mobile developers that Havi pointed us to. Most app developers seem to be men in their 30s working for small companies. I could have guessed the men part and the 30s part wasn’t surprising. The small companies part was interesting. There’s a lot of good info in there.
  • I read a bunch about Jawbone Up, Nike Fuelband and Fitday. I wish the Jawbone Up worked on Android so I could put it on my Christmas list.
  • Realized that robots are hitting the news a lot. From Disney robots that can play catch to MIT robots that can rebuild themselves for the job.
  • Watched my 6 year old wrap all of his presents for Christmas by himself. The excitement is contagious!
  • Learned that it’s unlikely I’ll ever get a computer screen built into my contact lenses as your eye can’t focus on anything that close. I’ll just have to push for that brain implant. One of my favorite book scenes is in one of Peter Hamilton’s books where the protagonist goes into a computer store to pick out a computer that fits into her brain. I wanted to go shopping with her!