Category: question

General, Lists, question

What would I tell my 15 year-old self, if I could?

This exercise was put forth over at Gapers Block. I found the comments very interesting seeing a mix of shared insight, missed opportunity and painful regret. So I thought really hard what I would tell myself, and I realized I wouldn’t focus on any one event. I find my missed opportunities and my past transgressions make me and I prefer to live in the present.
But if I could, I would tell the 15 year old me:

  • Put more at risk.
  • Always look for the good in people.
  • When you commit to something give yourself completely.
  • Breath, be still and don’t worry so much.
  • (okay one specific event)Go to the Nirvana Concert!!!!!!!!

More importantly,
If I really could I would tell the 10 year old me, don’t play king of the dumpster, don’t push your sister.

question

Most Valuable Conference Hallways

In Eric Norlin’s Digital Identity World Recap #2 (1 and 3 coming soon) the writes that

Jonathan Penn (of Forrester) declined to be on a panel because he thought he’d get more value by being in the audience (and he said I could quote him).

I have heard and read other people say that some conferences are valuable simply for the hallway conversations.

So my question:
What are the top five most valuable conferences simply due to the quality of the hallway conversations?

question, Technology, tomcarroll.org

My RFP for Feed management services

I am looking to migrate from my WordPress generated and managed feeds to a third party service. So I thought I would spell out my requirements.

The important stuff:

  • The migration to the service must be seamless for my current subscribers (Yeah I know all 3).
  • The service should provide a suite of metrics that allow me better understand who, how often, when, how long, how many times (You know what I mean, the numbers).
  • In the case that I choose to leave your service, I must be able to migrate my feeds transparently and also be able to migrate my usage data.
  • I would like support for one click subscription to the various news readers.
  • The service must have tight wordpress integration.
  • Integration with analytical packages say like Google analytics
  • feeds must be human readable
  • I would like it to support leave comment from the feed.
  • Configurable support for social network services like Digg or del.icio.us (Sometimes I want it on, sometimes off)
  • Support for the widest set of RSS extensions (This is what I mean)
  • A strong record of availability, reliability and scalability (I might hit 4 subscribers someday)
  • Should support multiple feeds per site, no limit.
  • Integration to see where my feed is bookmarked and subscribed (share.opml.org, del.icio.us, Google reader ect…)

The not so important stuff:

  • Advertising, I prefer none. ( I know that say for a free service this is negotiable)

A free service must support the first 3 bullet points in my important stuff list. The rest Is negotiable. I may be willing to pay for no ads and really cool features. I would like to see a track record of satisfied customers, transparency is good. So that is it so far, if I think of more I will be sure to spring it on you in the 9th hour.

So make your case (reader recommendations welcome)

blogging, question, tomcarroll.org

Question: To edit or iterate

I have been writing my blog in some form since about 2003. At first the having a blog was just meant as a trial of the format that I had been enjoying for years. Now that I post a bit more regularly, I have been thinking about how I write/ create content. I don’t claim to be a skilled writer just an eager one. I have struggled with how formal my writing process should be, how much prep, how many drafts ect. So I have come to the point where I am going to treat my writing as an iterative process. each post as an iteration trying to improve generally and possibly re-working previous ideas.

So here is my question:
How do you approach writing your blog, is it more edit or more iterate and why?