David's Blog

New Site?

There are plans in the works for a new site of sort to host some of my writing. Nate has been in daily contact with me discussing this new site, which he envisions as something of a collaborative blog. I'll quickly try to describe my take on what this new site is going to be like and then give my thoughts and feelings on the site. Nate will probably be by sometime in the few days to comment with his vision of what this will be. We're getting close to a name too, so maybe that will be added in the comments or in a future entry.

So, Nate seems to be pretty excited about this new site. I am not even going to call it a blog yet, because I have no idea what this is going to end up being. I know that what Nate probably really wants is a collaborative blog similar to what wantingseed.com was when it started.

Wantingseed.com is effectually no longer a collaborative blog. It started out with two regular writers and a fairly infrequent guest writer that drew in big numbers in terms of site visits and visitor comments. The guest writer stopped contributing somewhere along the line, and then one of the members moved to China, had a lower contribution rate, and eventually stopped writing altogether. Wantingseed.com continues today with just one writer, but his writing has dropped off from five to seven times a month to now just one to three times a month.

So, now that Nate is coming to me quite excited about his new idea I sit back with some reservations. I know that I am fairly busy these days with the new marriage, UPS, and trying to start a sales organization for Avanti Media Inc. I hadn't quite come out and said it, but I was waiting for Nate to make most of the first moves. Here's why…
1. Nate knows how just as well as I do.
2. Nate has access to a small handful of people that can help him if he wants to do things that are beyond him. He also has the time to do this. I have neither of these two things.
3. Nate is wanting this to be a collaboration between his roommate, Nate and me. So, it just makes sense that he'd get the site rolling because he's the middleman and the idea man.
4. Nate doesn't seem to be the most regular and consistent writer.

More on the fourth point… Looking at his blog you'll see that there are several months that are completely skipped. Also, there are many months that have anywhere from one to three posts in them. To me, this means that a blog isn't really healthy, which is probably just an unrealistic standard. I like regularity. If you only blog once a week or twice a month at least try to do it around the same time of the week or month.

The more I think about this irregular writing the less of an issue it seems to be. Nate doesn't write all that often, but I ran the numbers and he has written an entry once every 3.77 days, which is an average of twice a week. He does go on writing binges, but so do I. Hopefully, having three or more writers on one site will offset the irregular writing of any one writer and keep the whole going.

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Now that I've exhausted your attention by writing about my reservations, let me get on to what makes me interested in this blog.

First, I am interested in the idea of a collaborative blog too. I wanted to be a part of wantingseed.com, but it just never happened. I wanted to have a blog for Joy and I, but I just don't see Joy being all that into it. Also, what would we write about? Perhaps it would just be a chronological list of family news items.

Secondly, though I don't want to be the one who pushes this into being, I do want to make it grow once it gets off of the ground. I have recently read the Apache Software Foundation's organizational literature @ http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.htm and it was inspiring. I think that a blog could easily grow in a similar fashion. Nate, Conor, and I would start this site up. If other people found our efforts interesting and worthwhile they'd probably want to participate first by reading, then by commenting, then maybe by writing a single "guest piece." After writing a few guest pieces we might try them out as a writer for a month, and then finally add them on as a fully-fledged writer. If, after time goes by, Nate wants to move on to something else he would give the site administration over to one of these writers who is interested. By doing all of this we could start something that has the ability to outlast our interest in it.

Finally, I like the idea of having the opportunity to write somewhere other than in my blog. It is really cool that this site has a pre-defined subject in mind. Now, whenever I want to write about issues concerning religion, ethics, morality, society, practice, etc I can leave my blog and write elsewhere. (Though, I will probably want to link the two. So when I write an entry at this new site it will show up as an entry in my blog… for my reference if nothing else.)

I guess that wraps this up. I am staying tuned in to Nate to see when this thing launches. When it does, and I write my first contribution I'll definitely put up announce it here and put up a link to it somewhere on my main page.

Posted by David at June 17, 2005 08:55 AM