This entry was recorded earlier
I'm not sure if postings for a blog are generally assumed to be 'live', or if scheduling them in advance is fairly routine.
Dave Winer defines a blog as the unedited voice of a person. His own blog is one he clearly works on daily, editing and refining posts during the day. His opinions often appear to me to be a little off the cuff, and a careful reading of his archive will certainly turn up inconsistencies, and long abandoned opinions.
Another blogger I read daily is Raymond Chen. His 'Old New Thing' is also clearly a personal blog, at the same time as appearing to be an attempt to develop a particular theme. His posts about technical matters of Windows set great store by the engineering required to maintain compatibility with software that Microsoft's customers run on Windows, in ways that not all software engineers agree are appropriate.
Raymond's blog is written in batches, and scheduled in advance, which presumably makes it easier to be consistent in approach. Dave's blog appears to be written more as a stream of thought. My personal blog's name (Train of Thought) reflects a view that blogs work well when written as-it-happens. However, as I tried to write there about my plans for Transmission Begins, I realised the benefits of writing in advance, and publishing a group of articles in episodic form.
Posts to this blog will therefore be a mixture. If you're not sure which is which, and you care to find out, those who know me well will realise that a post time of '8.30 am' is unlikely to be live.
Business of Software Dinner in London
Last night I went along to a dinner organised on the side of the Business Of Software discussion group.
The diverse group proved that the people interested in the forum aren't all starting software businesses, and the discussions were interesting. It was nice to spend an evening where talking about software was part of the general conversation.
I was a little disappointed that several of the attendees were in marketing positions for the 'Business of Software' conference. This gave the evening a bit of a 'being marketed to' feel in places, while it was ostensibly a social event for like minded peers. Shame that the marketing team didn't think to buy a round of drinks I guess.
I met several other people who are starting businesses similar in size and goals to Transmission Begins, and I always like to know I'm not doing anything too unusual. A good group, and one I plan to go to regularly.
I have a twitter account. In fact I have two. Which should you follow? Having set one up a few years ago, and the other more recently, I've been reflecting on whether it is somehow more appropriate to have just one account for all purposes, or separate accounts for 'work' and 'everything else'.
The first (digitalreality) was established as a way of reaching friends and people who know (or want to know) me well. The second (jhm_tbegins) I established a couple of weeks ago to provide an account I could focus on Transmission Begins from. I'm sympathetic to the view that having two separate blogs/twitters/email addresses/etc is somehow unnecessary, after all I'm one person, and my views don't magically change when I enter or leave the professional sphere. In the same vein, a Google for my name by a colleague or friend will necessarily turn up both Facebook pictures taken at parties, and more sober presentations I've given on behalf of employers.
However, that they look like one world in the results page of Google is not entirely true, because there are differences in the relationships I have with friends, acquaintances and colleagues. Whilst I hope my character will be important to most people I deal with, the skills and opinions they need to rely on will differ. We don't have to agree on all matters to have a successful commercial relationship. My role as a company director also affects things. Views I express as a director are necessarily those of the company too. When the company is small, those two things are not very different, but I hope Transmission Begins will grow, and that will mean that the company will have responsibilities to many people, not just the directors.
I anticipate that while Transmission Begins is small, and the people interested in it know me in other spheres, there will be a lot of work activity on my 'personal' twitter feed. It is also easy for me to post everything into one place! However, as the company grows I will put more of my work on the jhm_tbegins twitter feed. Hopefully the tools you use to follow twitter will enable you to combine and separate them in ways that are useful to you.
A Blog Reboot
When I started this blog, I was wary of it becoming one among many that small business owners write, where the focus is on day to day items about the business, rather than items I imagined might interest an audience for Transmission Begins' software.
Having been largely silent for a month or so, and been somewhat sporadic before then, I have to face the reality that inspiration about what might interest my customers has not struck. I'm now more concerned that silence is a bigger problem. There is the further fact that the audience for Transmission Begins software is small (if growing!), and there are plenty of readers who are more interested in what I'm up to than buying software they have no need for.
An important goal of this blog has always been personal - for me to write more, and to do so regularly. I've noticed that many blogs I enjoy most are updated frequently, even when I don't read every item. Therefore I'm going to place an emphasis on writing more, and less about worrying what to write about. I'm going to trust that interesting topics and trends will emerge over time.
A Network Outage at Transmission Begins
I'd just like to apologise for yesterday's network outage here at Transmission Begins. I believe all of our servers were unreachable for several hours while our hosting provider (Bytemark) battled a problem that disconnected all their customers from the internet.
We're small enough here that there is not much to do but select a provider for whom this sort of event is rare, and keep offsite backups. In Bytemark's case, this seems to be their first major outage in several years, so I plan to stick by the choice I've made.
I was kept well informed (via twitter) of their work on the problem, and they have posted a diagnosis on their support forum.
I don't anticipate a large impact for our customers (our software doesn't get in touch with our servers, except when you request a licence validation), but please do get in touch if this has caused any problems.
