On Being Named a Most Influential Blogger
While out traipsing around the Northeastern corner of Washington state last week and through yesterday, in and out of cell coverage, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was included in a list of Most Influential Technical Communication Bloggers that was compiled by MindTouch. I’m back home today, so can now write about it properly.
I truly am honored and appreciative to be included on the list. Those don’t seem like strong enough words to explain this, so here’s an entire post about it. There’s a bit of a story with this blog of mine, which makes this listing even more amazing to me.
The main reason I started my blog was to keep working after an accident. To help my recovery along. To keep thinking, analyzing, coding, designing, and writing. To stay in the game and keep my hand on changes in the industry. For I’ve long seen that there are massive changes underway, and I’m most passionate about integrating these changes and excited about their effect on documentation. Blogs provide an excellent format in which to discuss such topics.
Fast forward to a little over a year later, and I find myself on this amazing list of bloggers from around the world. Wow.
The goal of my blog is to raise these most important topics that face us in the industry. My hope is to get everyone thinking about the changes and how they can work them into their docs. My concern when I started this was that changes aren’t being made as quickly as they should. I still worry about that. Tech writing as an industry moves too slow for me sometimes. I’d love to see it move at real-time speed. That is needed, because the world is already at that fast-moving point. My concern is that you don’t just get behind these days when trying to keep up with change. You get exponentially behind, and may never ever catch up. All the blogs are pointing out all these needed changes and providing a means to discuss, analyze, and bring them to the forefront. So review the blogs on MindTouch’s list and Honorable Mentions. Take a look at the SDI blog as well (sdicorp.com). Read any others you come across. There’s never been a more important, watershed time in our industry. We need everyone to be thinking about it all, making sense of it, and providing some direction.
If you have thoughts, ideas, and opinions of your own to share, by all means start blogging! I wrote a post about my 1-year anniversary of my blog that outlines how I started and how it evolved over the past year in case that helps. Just be prepared for a lot of work. Blogs don’t just happen. Twitter feeds don’t just appear. Developing an online presence takes incredible, dedicated effort. Every day, every week. I’ve been out a week, and know I have much catch-up to do. The effort is worth it, though. Definitely worth it. If you don’t have time to devote to this just yet, then leave a comment periodically on a blog post. Set up a Twitter account and use the #techcomm hashtag once in a while. Add a note on Facebook pages. Make your voice heard. We need everyone’s thoughts and ideas.
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So here I am today writing about a most incredible event in my life. What started as an important tool in my recovery has evolved into inclusion on a list with very impressive bloggers from everywhere. Like finishing my tri a few weeks ago, this is sweet. I’m feeling like I’m really, finally back. As it happens, I’m number 16 on the list, which I think is perfect. Sweet 16!
Thank you very much to everyone that has followed me for reading along, commenting, and participating in discussions and my Twitter experiments. You’re an integral part of all this, and have made my online presence what it is. I’ll do my best to continue providing information you may find useful. I also have more changes planned for my blog, so please stay tuned!
To Mark Fidelman and MindTouch: thank you for reviewing and analyzing my blog in the first place, and for adding me to your list. It means more to me than you can possibly imagine.
Update 6/19/23: MindTouch was acquired in 2021.
