"O! call back yesterday, bid time return."

What do you mean, it's 2009 already?!

But I haven't even made a "real" post yet!

And it's not that I lack ideas. I've got a bunch of "seeds" written down in a corner. And a couple other posts I'd like to contribute on different blogs. And a couple "lessons learned" for our intranet. And another improvement idea I wanted to look into. And, and...

But I don't work on these things. I work on my project, of course. The project's got deadlines. The project means revenue for the company. The project has a worried manager asking me how things are going. The project is real.

Pretty much everyone at Macadamian will agree that process improvement matters. That we need to take some time to share our knowledge and our experiences. I've often heard "Gee, I wish I'd have heard that sooner." after talking about a past experience. And as such, we all believe it makes sense to "put some time away" to work on "internal matters".

In practice, however, it's not working too well. For me, anyway. How can I put everything on hold, even for a couple hours, knowing that the project needs me?

Now, ironically enough, if you, dear reader, are reading this post, it means I finally got enough relevant content to "go live". Huzzah! ;-) Nevertheless, I'd like to ask for suggestions on this topic. Are there tips & tricks that you've successfully been using to put some time away from your core project?

Side Note: In case you're wondering, the title is a Shakespeare quote... that I took from a Magic: The Gathering card. So I guess I'm more of a "geek" than a "nerd", am I?

Too good for my own good...

Now, I don't plan to post that often - perhaps once every 3-5 weeks. However, my initial intend was to get a least one more post in there ASAP, before disclosing my blog to the rest of the company.

Alas, the post that I had been working was deemed "technical enough" by Jason to wind up on the Macadamian Files, so, well, go read it over there. ;-)

I'll do my best to add "one more real post" soon.

RUN!! Here comes (yet) another blog!

Let's start by being honest: I didn't want to do this.

I mean, I like writing, no doubt about it. But the idea of kicking off my blog, even a work-related one, didn't really appeal to me. What would be the point? Won't I merely be repeating the same pearls of wisdom found across the web?

And yet...

When Macadamian's article "Code Reviews - Part of Your Complete Breakfast" was published in a couple magazines, two things happened. First, unsurprisingly, people started pointing out that we weren't really adding anything new to the topic, and were merely repeating what had been said elsewhere.

However, for each of those naysayers, we also got people thanking us about the article. It appeared that those people, although most of them did already believe what we said, appreciated hearing about it from a fresh angle. In some cases, they simply enjoyed getting "a refresher" on the topic.

From that point on, we as a company decided that we would strive to share our knowledge as much as possible, having concluded that the willingness to share knowledge is as important (if not more) than the extent of that knowledge.

In other words, we might not be the most knowledgeable on a topic, but we'll tell you what we know. ;-)

So that's what convinced me to go ahead with a work-related blog. Perhaps I won't bring any new ideas, but I definitely intent to share a new perspective on a few things.

Same truths. Different voice.