In the past few months, I’ve dramatically increased the number of channels from and to the community and since they are likely to cause some confusion, this post will briefly review and explain my intentions.
First, the list:
- Tutorials
- Books
- Videos
- Webcasts
- Presentations
- Silverlight Blog
- O’Reilly Blog
- My Other Blog
- Amazon Blog
- Private Twitter
- Silverlight MicroBlog
- Silverlight HyperBlog +Email +Forum
- Portal
- Book Support
- Phone
- Emergency IM
- Other IM
- Technorati
- DotNetSlackers
- CommunityCredit
- Plaxo
- Linked In
- Del.icio.us
- DiggIt
- Wikipedia
- Flikr
- etc.
Formal, Mostly One Way, High Value Communication
A large part of my job is to produce what we call “content” (though I bet I’m not supposed to say that out loud) which includes our Tutorials, Videos, Presentations and Webcasts. You can always find links tot he latest of these on the sidebar of my blog
In addition, Tim and I are under contract with O’Reilly to write the forthcoming Programming Silverlight 2 which has been embraced by Microsoft and is also (isn’t this cool?) part of our job here.
I try to keep my Blog reasonably focused on Silverlight, but I do include the occasional article on anything from technology rants to just rants. That said, if the signal to noise ratio falls too low, let me know!
Other Connections
In addition to the big 5 (Tutorials, Book, Videos, Presentations and Webcasts) I’ve created as many innovative connections as I can think of or steal from others. These include a few that require explanation…
The Twitter Family
- Private Twitter – I use this for occasional outbursts, but mostly to let folks know where I am when I’m on the road
- Silverlight MicroBlog – an experiment in “how much blogging can you do in 140 characters” – that I’m still working on but that is an interesting idea I keep coming back to
- Silverlight HyperBlog – a new experiment in blogging my work day in some detail supported by a dedicated email address to get feedback and a dedicated community forum in case subscribers want to discuss anything that comes up in the blizzard of tweets. This is clearly experimental, but interesting.
Other Blogs
O’Reilly Blog and author site is often neglected in favor of this one. However, it does contains links to book information, old articles and can be useful (at least to me) from time to time.
The Amazon Author Blog is mostly a “fan” site, with reproductions of blog entries from elsewhere, the occasional original entry and such compelling data as my wish list and my most recent purchases (a digital download of Brian Eno’s Fat Lady Of Limbourg)
Finally, I recently renamed my political blog to My Other Blog – it has had numerous names, but its focus has moved away from pure *** Politics and it is now where I write anything I feel the need to write that doesn’t belong here (perhaps this blog entry should have been put there??)
Phone and IM
I’m quite ambivalent about posting my phone number and now I’ve added Instant Messaging to my blog, which is absurd.
With 1/2 a million readers of my books, and 200+ incoming emails a day, and working an average 70 hour week, it is silly to think that I can answer calls or take IM. But there is an endless internal psychic conflict in wanting (needing?) that personal touch; meeting the needs of the individual developer. Of course, the reality is that the only choice is to redirect callers to the excellent Silverlight forums or to my book support site, but this keeps alive my hope that I will, from time to time, be able to provide that personal answer that gets someone back on track.
Web 2.0 Sites
It may not be completely accurate, but I would put my membership in Plaxo, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flikr, even DotNetSlackers and CommunityCredit under this heading. All of this is an effort to be “out there” as a presence, reaching out to the community. At the same time, participating in Technorati, Deli.icio.us and DiggIt is a way to let folks know about the Blog, and Wikipedia is not something I can control but it is a blast to be listed.
All in all, my goal, over time, is to provide access, community and, most important, useful information, with as little noise as possible.
