Blogging through the decades
Over the summer, I hit an anniversary of sorts: I’ve been blogging for two decades (!). For reasons I’ll get to, I’ve been reflecting back on my history of writing in general and blogging in particular.
In 2004, blogging wasn’t exactly new (it had been around in one form or another for as long as a decade), but it also wasn’t something that I was actively engaged in. And while there was some blogging infrastructure at Sun, it was desultory and oriented around Java. Similarly, while there were also vectors for engineers to directly engage with customers, they were limited to proprietary forums, with very specific topics (e.g., support issues) and generally inaccessible and undiscoverable. All of that changed in the spring, when Sun rolled out a new policy on discourse and then – a few months later – blogs.sun.com. As Tim Bray retold, the disposition with respect to blogging was purposeful: employees weren’t merely allowed to blog, they were actively encouraged to do so – and provided all of the infrastructure to make it easy. The message was clear, and it was explicit: “We trust you.”
