{"id":8984,"date":"2019-05-16T09:18:35","date_gmt":"2019-05-16T08:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/?p=8984"},"modified":"2026-03-26T16:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:57:08","slug":"10-years-and-1000-blogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/2019\/05\/16\/10-years-and-1000-blogs\/","title":{"rendered":"10 years and 1000 blogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 \u2026<\/p>\n

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 \u201con topic\u201d [embedded software] blog and another on some other topic that was on my mind.<\/p>\n

My first posting<\/a> 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!<\/p>\n

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<\/a>. If I tag a posting appropriately, it gets \u201cpromoted\u201d to the Embedded Systems blog here<\/a>, which also receives contributions from others.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

So, what now? At this point I should be saying something like \u201cHere\u2019s to the next 1000 posts!\u201d. 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!<\/p>\n

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!<\/p>\n

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This day is one of celebration! And I invite you to raise a glass – a metaphorical one, at least…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71677,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[302],"industry":[],"product":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-8984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-off-topic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71677"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8984"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10787,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8984\/revisions\/10787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8984"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=8984"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=8984"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}