10 years and 1000 blogs

This day is one of celebration! And I invite you to raise a glass – a metaphorical one, at least – to mark an anniversary. It was in 2008 that Mentor’s IT and Corporate Marketing departments jointly decided to implement a blogging facility, so that a number of employees could talk to the world and, hopefully, raise more awareness of the company’s products and expertise. The system went live in early 2009 and I was one of those selected to be inaugural bloggers. And I have been doing it ever since …

I already had some experience of blogging in my personal life [and still do], so I was well aware of what was required. I knew that a key thing in the success of a blog was consistency: regular postings with a theme. I decided that I would establish a default posting schedule: Monday and Thursday each week; typically I would actually write the blogs on a Wednesday. Of course, sometimes I would miss one [I am allowed vacation!] or post something extra. I also figured that, to build some kind of following, I would need to appeal to people not too different from myself. So, I established a pattern where each week I would post one “on topic” [embedded software] blog and another on some other topic that was on my mind.

My first posting was published on 6 May 2009. So, I have been turning them out for 10 years! The time seems to have flown by; I have seen many changes in my personal life and quite a few in my professional world. As you can easily calculate, 2 posts per week for 10 years adds up to about 1000 posts, which is around half a million words!

The Mentor blogging facility is quite sophisticated. When I publish a blog, it goes live immediately [or when I schedule it] to my personal blog, here. If I tag a posting appropriately, it gets “promoted” to the Embedded Systems blog here, which also receives contributions from others.

It takes work to create 2 postings every week, but, fortunately, I enjoy writing and do not find it too onerous. I also post periodic blogs on some external sites, where I have been invited to make a contribution. From time to time, I post about a topic and realize that it could be expanded to a full-sized article, a conference paper or a webinar. I also make frequent [YouTube] videos that are inspired by blog posts. I keep notes on future blog topics, but I very much welcome suggestions by email or via social media.

So, what now? At this point I should be saying something like “Here’s to the next 1000 posts!”. However, that is not realistic. I will be continuing my blog for the indefinite future, until either someone decides that I should stop or my employment terminates. I think that the former is reasonably unlikely. The latter will occur at sometime – hopefully when I will retire, which will be sometime in the next few years. In any case, I guess that I will not be celebrating 20 years of posting and 2000 blogs in 2029!

In the meantime, if you are a regular or occasional reader, thanks for your time. I always appreciate comments, feedback and suggestions. It is nice to know that there is someone out there!