June 12 2018 Tuesday
10 Year Blogaversary
I really wasn't keeping track of this, but I've had some issues with the blog lately and went down the archive section and low and behold the first post was on July 2nd 2008. 10 fricken years. An entire decade of ranting and raving and hopefully occasionally useful stuff......That's not to say I've really kept up the pace from the early years (in fact the frequency has plummeted), nor has it been all smelling of roses (more on that later).
So what have the last 1,685 posts taught me? Well, first off I've never moved the blog off of Domino and a true testament to the genius that is Steve Castledine (I do find the occasional bug but I can usually work around that). The UI was changed back in 2013 (thanks to Sedar's work with bootstrap) and the location move to Prominic but it's still the same NSF and same data. I wonder how many different blog platforms Stuart has tried in the last decade? It is behind NginX these days and the blog was SSL'd a while back.
So what else has happened here since that first posting? Well....
Now for some interesting product things....
First BlackBerry post - July 8, 2008
Last BlackBerry post - March 9, 2011
First iPhone post - March 9, 2011 (the exact same post as the last BlackBerry one!)
First Quickr post - August 21, 2008
Last Quickr post - August 25, 2017 (almost a year after IBM support ended)
First Symphony post - June 11, 2009
Last Symphony post - June 11, 2009 (only one post, a tad prescient)
First Let's Encrypt post - October 1, 2015
First Veeam post - June 15, 2009
I don't track any other stats any more, like page reads and that kind of stuff (if there is any Google Analytics stuff in here, it's just because I've not gotten around to taking it out...I'm egotistical and a tad narcissistic but not *that* egotistical and narcissistic), but you can tell the popular posts usually by either comments on the blog or off-line messages like email or phone calls. So what was the most active blog posts? There are two and they are both IBM related, and remember when I said above it was not all plain sailing....
The first was a lamenting, somewhat ranty yet absolutely correct post where IBM were all fired up about mail.next and I mentioned that mail.now should take precedence. This culminated in IBM threatening to revoke (my non-existent) IBM Champion status and I believe they also threatened to sue STS and boot us out of the business partner program. Why you may be wondering what caused all this kerfuffle? This sentence, “no one in my organization will tell me the truth because I’m a vindictive asshole, so don’t cross me or I will end your career" in reference to what an IBM executive may think to themselves.
Now, IBMers usually won't call me directly, so they'll go via Lisa. Call they did, and all they seemed to want to know was who possibly could this IBM executive be? I wasn't anyone I actually know personally so if you've ever had a conversation with me, it's not you. I also wasn't any of the names mentioned in the calls Lisa got involved in. Boy was she pissed at me, but I think IBM using threats pissed her off more. Buy her a drink at the next conference you see her at and get the full story.
The second was also IBM Champion related. It is also one of the funniest things I've ever done "form-submission-wise". I filled in an IBM Champion self nomination for myself and actually submitted it. You have to see it to really get it. I still chortle to myself on the odd occasion I go read that modern day classic.
Honorable mentions also go to the posts about IBM killing 9.0.2 and it's slightly older sibling 9.0.2 Where for art thou?.
What other upsides are there to this decade long journey? Well, I've not written or updated a resume/CV for years. The hiring process for new customers goes something like this:
Step 1 - Customer Google's something. Google kindly returns one of my blog entries.
Step 2 - The customer contacts STS asking if we know this stuff. Lisa searches the blog, sends several articles on the topic to the customer.
Step 3 - Profit.
Seriously, that's pretty much how this works now, and while we'll never really know how much impact the blog has had to STS revenue, I think it's up there. And Lisa never wanted me to start a blog in the first place! True story. Also a true story, the search was broken in the blog (due to a security HTTP header) and that's how I realized it had been 10 years.
Finally there is nothing quite like Googling something and your own blog post has the answer to the question. It's equal parts effing cool and worrying that you used to know this and no longer even remember writing the answer.
Here's to another 10 years......
So what have the last 1,685 posts taught me? Well, first off I've never moved the blog off of Domino and a true testament to the genius that is Steve Castledine (I do find the occasional bug but I can usually work around that). The UI was changed back in 2013 (thanks to Sedar's work with bootstrap) and the location move to Prominic but it's still the same NSF and same data. I wonder how many different blog platforms Stuart has tried in the last decade? It is behind NginX these days and the blog was SSL'd a while back.
So what else has happened here since that first posting? Well....
- 1,685 blog posts.
- 1,226 comments.
- 2 podcasts have been born.
- 1 podcast has been put to rest.
- 8 end of year (snark) reviews have been published.
- At least 13 conference presentations have been given (11 are linked on the blog), but that number is probably closer to 17.
- There are 13 drafts that never saw the light of day. One or two are pretty scathing.
Now for some interesting product things....
First BlackBerry post - July 8, 2008
Last BlackBerry post - March 9, 2011
First iPhone post - March 9, 2011 (the exact same post as the last BlackBerry one!)
First Quickr post - August 21, 2008
Last Quickr post - August 25, 2017 (almost a year after IBM support ended)
First Symphony post - June 11, 2009
Last Symphony post - June 11, 2009 (only one post, a tad prescient)
First Let's Encrypt post - October 1, 2015
First Veeam post - June 15, 2009
I don't track any other stats any more, like page reads and that kind of stuff (if there is any Google Analytics stuff in here, it's just because I've not gotten around to taking it out...I'm egotistical and a tad narcissistic but not *that* egotistical and narcissistic), but you can tell the popular posts usually by either comments on the blog or off-line messages like email or phone calls. So what was the most active blog posts? There are two and they are both IBM related, and remember when I said above it was not all plain sailing....
The first was a lamenting, somewhat ranty yet absolutely correct post where IBM were all fired up about mail.next and I mentioned that mail.now should take precedence. This culminated in IBM threatening to revoke (my non-existent) IBM Champion status and I believe they also threatened to sue STS and boot us out of the business partner program. Why you may be wondering what caused all this kerfuffle? This sentence, “no one in my organization will tell me the truth because I’m a vindictive asshole, so don’t cross me or I will end your career" in reference to what an IBM executive may think to themselves.
Now, IBMers usually won't call me directly, so they'll go via Lisa. Call they did, and all they seemed to want to know was who possibly could this IBM executive be? I wasn't anyone I actually know personally so if you've ever had a conversation with me, it's not you. I also wasn't any of the names mentioned in the calls Lisa got involved in. Boy was she pissed at me, but I think IBM using threats pissed her off more. Buy her a drink at the next conference you see her at and get the full story.
The second was also IBM Champion related. It is also one of the funniest things I've ever done "form-submission-wise". I filled in an IBM Champion self nomination for myself and actually submitted it. You have to see it to really get it. I still chortle to myself on the odd occasion I go read that modern day classic.
Honorable mentions also go to the posts about IBM killing 9.0.2 and it's slightly older sibling 9.0.2 Where for art thou?.
What other upsides are there to this decade long journey? Well, I've not written or updated a resume/CV for years. The hiring process for new customers goes something like this:
Step 1 - Customer Google's something. Google kindly returns one of my blog entries.
Step 2 - The customer contacts STS asking if we know this stuff. Lisa searches the blog, sends several articles on the topic to the customer.
Step 3 - Profit.
Seriously, that's pretty much how this works now, and while we'll never really know how much impact the blog has had to STS revenue, I think it's up there. And Lisa never wanted me to start a blog in the first place! True story. Also a true story, the search was broken in the blog (due to a security HTTP header) and that's how I realized it had been 10 years.
Finally there is nothing quite like Googling something and your own blog post has the answer to the question. It's equal parts effing cool and worrying that you used to know this and no longer even remember writing the answer.
Here's to another 10 years......
Discussion for this entry is now closed.
Comments (4)
@1, I've found some nuggets here too ;)
@2, it's actually in the blog post that link goes to. And here.
Congrats Darren. The number of times I had a question and found the answer on your blog is definitely a testimony to your mastery of IBM's Collaboration Solutions (among others). Thanks for sharing! (HUG) :-D
Hey Darren, Congrats on 10 years! Thanks for blogging, I have often found some golden nugget in your posts. Thanks again!