Switching away from Substack is a hot topic right now, for reasons I won’t belabor here (hint: it’s because of the Nazis) – which means that people are searching for alternatives. One that’s getting tossed around is WordPress. As much as I’d love that to be true, the WordPress Newsletter functionality is not what most folks think of when you think “newsletter.”
My friends, I have a request. That request is, for all that’s Holy, stop calling things “clickbait.” It’s an old and busted term that has no place in the media landscape of 2023.
In just a few weeks I’m going to be dusting off the slide clicker and giving two talks at Open Source Summit North America. I’ll be giving one talk on databases and containers, and another talk about working with text on Linux using Vim and other tools. Kind of a 101 for people who might want to delve into some command line magic for working with text. Are Containers Ready for Production Databases?...
Fair warning, I’m going to wade into the whole AI/ChatGPT discussion. It’s been discussed to death, but I’m going to jump in anyway. Feel free to click away if you’re already sick of the topic. I’m going to use “ChatGPT” as a stand-in for ML/AI-driven writing tools, even though it’s not the only one on the market and there’s certainly more to come. Anyway, it seems like ChatGPT is poised to automate away a lot of writing work, and we’re in for tools that are going to produce a whole lot of content of varying quality and accuracy whether we like that prospect or not.
Most people, I think, tend only to think about their actions and interactions as one-offs. That is, we think “what happens if I do this” and consider the impact from that perspective. But what if we considered the outcomes and impacts if everybody (or even a lot of people) do the same thing? We might act differently. And maybe we should think that way more often. Let’s talk about What If Everybody Did It (WIEDI)? (Don’t worry, there’s a tie-in to open source and community in here, too…)
Today is, if I don’t miss my count, 100 days since I started the 100 day blogging challenge. I’ve updated the site every day since November 21st last year. It’s been a good exercise. Some days I don’t have a lot left in the tank after work, some days I feel like I could do two or three posts. Focusing here has been great for breaking the Twitter habit. Question is whether I plan to keep going or take a break....
Nice post I discovered on the Orange site today, " I don’t like making the best things." Short summary, trying to make the “best” things gets in the way of doing things we enjoy. Specifically the author talks about blogging less often after they discovered they “only want to publish the best things, so I didn’t publish at all.” Not exactly a new concept, but one that we probably all need to hear or read on a regular basis....
This week I took a little trip down memory lane when a friend posted a meme or something about Stephen King’s Wang word processor in the 1980s. That was early for me, but sometime in 1993 or 1994 I bought my first word processor. Not a general purpose computer with a word processor, but a Brother Word Processor. It was substantially less profit-generating for me than King’s Wang. Then again, it wasn’t a five-figure investment, either. Maybe $250, certainly no more than $300. At 23 or 24, though, that was a major investment. I’ve owned cars that cost less.
Writing and editing are taught widely in schools and professional programs, but content review is a neglected and unloved (and rare) skill that I’ve never seen taught or even acknowledged – but it’s widely required in jobs throughout the tech industry. If you’re a product manager, product marketer, comms professional, content writer, developer advocate, community manager – take your pick – you probably need to participate in content review as part (or most) of your job, but do you feel confident you’re doing it well and efficiently?
Video content is here to stay. As a text-based person with a face for radio, I’ve come to grips with it. But that doesn’t mean video alone gets it done. If you’re producing video content, please also share a transcript of the video. I realize some people love video, and that’s fine - but it’s not that much harder to include a transcript and it’s much more inclusive and potentially more effective....