Originality through Ignorance

eric — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:11:00 +0000

You have to admire the restraint some people show when faced with somebody else expounding on the obvious. I was sitting with my friend and coworker, Jeff Erikson, at the recent No Fluff Just Stuff conference explaining that I had decided to come out of my “I have way to much stuff to do” shell and start blogging. I had three reasons:
1. Most of the stuff I learn and then write up for our various projects comes from publicly available sources like other blogs and articles, plus a little bit of my own work gluing it together. So it seemed only fair to publish the results back where it could help others.
2. It was a good way to find out when I really didn’t know what I was talking about since any readers would gladly point out (in the nicest of terms) that I was off base and should perhaps find another occupation.
3. It was a good way to create a public record of what I have worked on in case such a thing should ever come in handy for unnamed reasons.

Jeff was nice enough to listen politely without smacking me upside the head and saying, “Read the first entry in my blog.” That would be the article where he talks about the keynote speech by Jared Richardson at the Rich Web Experience conference last fall which outlines much the same reasons for starting a blog.

That piece of humble pie tasted really good. Especially with a nice chaser of irony since anyone who works with me knows that I hate reinventing the wheel. Hopefully, my new resolution to do more regular reading (rather than cramming on new techs when I need to use them) will help me avoid thinking I am original when, in fact, I am just ignorant.

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Originality through Ignorance