Knowledge Work

Blogging is good for your career. A well-executed blog sets you apart as an expert in your field.

Ben Day blogged his way into a career as a high-earning software consultant while maintaining the freedom to schedule frequent jam sessions and performances as a keyboard player.

Blogging gave him the opportunity to stand out enough to support the life he envisioned for himself. ‘’For your career, a blog is essential,” says Phil van Allen, a faculty member of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

‘’It’s the new public relations and it’s the new home page. Instead of a static home page, you have your blog,” he said. It’s a way to let people know what you are thinking about the field that interests you.

Blogs ‘essential’ to a good career - The Boston Globe (April 16, 2006)

A great question over at MetaTalk brings the BBSers out of the woodwork: “Were you a BBSer? Did you run a BBS?” The person asking the question has noted some similarities between BBS culture and blog culture, and I think that’s a very good observation.

For those of you who weren’t around or weren’t paying attention in the early 1980s to mid-1990s, a computer Bulletin Board System (BBS) was

…a computer system running software that allows users to dial into the system over a phone line and, using a terminal program, perform functions such as downloading software and data, uploading data, playing games, reading news, and exchanging messages with other users. During their heyday (from the early 1980s to the mid 1990s), many BBSes were run as a hobby free of charge by the “SysOp” (system operator), while other BBSes charged their users a subscription fee for access.

(Thanks, Wikipedia! Like many of their articles on technical topics, the Wikipedia article on BBSes is almost mindsnappingly good and extremely detailed.)

I must confess that I was a rabid BBS user back in the day, and wound up owning and running not one but *two* of the beasts. I ran Homestead BBS, a Wildcat board, out of my apartment in Chapel Hill, NC for a couple of years in the late 1980s, and then I ran one of the first public Usenet boards in North Carolina, “Chatham Host,” after sweet-talking a friend at Duke University into providing me with a Usenet feed.

“Were you a BBSer? Did you ever run a BBS?” | MetaTalk

SCOUT Corporate Blogging offers 10 Tips for Becoming a Great Corporate Blogger.

If you blog as part of your business marketing strategy, spend a few minutes and read this post.

SCOUT Corporate Blogging (Backbone Media)

Quick blogroll update: The Alchemy of Soulful Work has a new home on the Web (they’ve ditched TypePad.)

A new blog that will be of interest to the IT Service Management and Business Process Improvement folks: ITIL4Real, a blog which aims to document an actual ITIL implementation project from its inception.

ITIL4Real: An ITIL project in the real world

Blogging will be light for the next day or two and likely “lumpy” afterwards; my usual posting schedule (before and after working hours, East Coast time) will be way off, as I’m heading to London for a week on a business trip, and Internet access (and time to write) will have to adjust to that new schedule.

Although I’m going to be kept pretty busy with work, I’m really looking forward to visiting some old friends (Carrie and I both have childhood friends now living and working in London) and drinking some real ale. Hopefully I’ll also manage a trip to Brick Lane for a cheap, fiery curry or two while I’m in town… London has it all over New York when it comes to Indian food.