Ah November! Where I’m from that means much cooler temperatures, hours of wood-stacking, a flurry of blaze orange covered people hiding in the woods, and another shot at completing the #vDM30in30.
For those that are not in the know the #vDM30in30 is a personal challenge that you bring upon yourself. A challenge in which bloggers attempt to publish 30 posts within the 30 days that November contains. This is only the second year that the folks over at Virtual Design Master (thus the VDM portion) have officially put forth the challenge. I for one attempted this last year and I think I only got a measly 8 posts out – so did I fail? Absolutely not – it’s just for fun and unlike their actual Virtual Design Master challenges this one is simply personal and not judged. If you want to learn more about the VDM’s vision for the challenge I’d suggest taking a look at @DiscoPosse’s blog here.
Is there value in cranking out blog posts?
I’m sure a few concerns will come to mind if you look at doing something like this. Concern about creating valid content, concern about whether your readership will even care, and concern about simply just generating noise in the community. These are the fears I had when I first started bouncing the idea of #vDM30in30 around my mind. As I explored the idea more though I came to the conclusion that although this is a public blog and I do a lot of public work on it, it’s still my blog – and honestly, I can do whatever I want with it. That’s when I took the idea of #vDM30in30 and really focused in on the personal challenge aspects of it.
The first concern, creating valid content. It’s inevitable that I won’t be able to crank out 30 technical posts about technical things in 30 days. It’s hard enough to do this in a year! What I will do is write about things I’m passionate about though – so don’t be surprised if you see some “out of place” articles pop up. The fact is it doesn’t matter whether I’m writing about connecting to an API, a newly released product, or Stompin’ Tom Connors – the end goal of this challenge for me is simply writing. With each and every post I would hope I learn something – whether that be technical, or something that simply helps me become a better writer. The end goal for me is to simply get the creative juices flowing and “put pen to paper”.
The second concern, similar to the first, is whether my readership will care. Again I’ll reiterate the end goal of improving my writing skills. I may write about the Montreal Canadiens – I’m an absolute fanatic – are you? Maybe, maybe not – doesn’t really matter. If you want to read it you will – if you don’t, you won’t. It’s as simple as that!
And thirdly, noise generation. Honestly, there is so much noise on my Twitter/Facebook right now that it’s hard enough to sift through it. At then end of this I came to the conclusion that my little tweets aren’t as influential as what I may think they are. I’m not a billion dollar company that has to keep on eye on my every public move – I’m just me, and the things I say and do only last a brief moment in the world of social media 🙂
Honestly I have a crazy November coming up with a VMUG, a VMware vForum, a Veeam User Group and a Tech Field Day. Now all of this is triggers a “content-generating” event anyways so I guess you could say that #vDM30in30 couldn’t come at a more fitting time for me. That said I can’t drag these out into 30 posts so I hope you all understand that you may see some “off topic” posts in the next 30 days. Take them with a grain of salt and know my end goal here is to simply improve and have fun. Feel free to play along – simply hashtag your posts with #vDM30in30, or don’t – doesn’t matter. And don’t worry too much about actually hitting 30 – remember last year – I had 8! This isn’t supposed to stress you out! That said – this counts as #1 🙂
