Hi. I'm Aaron F Stanton, one of the Senior Software Engineers at Compendium. I'll be using this space to talk about ideas I have on information, communication, economics, and blogging itself.
A bit about me: I am an Indiana native, having graduated from Purdue with a PhD in Chemistry in '99. As a result, you'll see a bit of a scientific slant to some of my ramblings.
I have opinions on religion and politics, but I'll try to keep them out of here - this isn't the place for that, as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure you can find me on the web if you're interested, but I'll tell you that I don't review computer games, nor did I ask if Google can hear me.
Enjoy.
Sometimes I run into people online who are very rude. They seem to think that this is excusable because they are "not really like that in real life". While I understand that behavior changes according to the context, I don't think it's a good idea to misrepresent yourself. The situation may change, and behavior might adjust, but you should always be yourself.
When you're out doing some business networking and meeting people for the first time, you generally know how to act. What to say, what kinds of jokes it's ok to tell and what are not, and you can do all that and still be yourself. Perhaps you are different in a room full of people you know well, and perhaps not.
When you're blogging, you want to humanize your marketing, but at the same time, remember that you are representing your company. I have a personal blog that I use when I want to say things that I might not say at work - not that there's anything there that I am ashamed of, but it just doesn't fit in a work environment. Some things I might talk about in both places - software, for example - but if I'm having a bad day, it's not going to show up here.
In both places, I'm myself. My online presence reflects how I am in person. If I say something rude online, I'd probably say the same thing if I were in a parallel situation in person. In a professional environment - here or face to face - I'm pretty much the same.
I believe that this sort of authentic presence is key to having people trust you. It's certainly worth doing.
One of the most powerful things one can do is to establish good habits. Even if it's some small thing that by itself doesn't seem to do much, incremental changes add up over time. Walk every day, and your cardiovascular system will benefit. Save a dollar every day, and you'll be surprised how quickly it adds up.
Blog every day, and your traffic will grow exponentially.
You get better at what you do, especially if you do it a lot. You learn what works and what doesn't, and adjust accordingly. If you take just a few minutes out of your day, you suddenly find you've done something great.
A saying I first heard years ago sums it up - "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time."
So, today, do something good.
As of Wednesday of this week, I've been with Compendium for an entire year. I really liked where I was before, and I stay in touch with the people there still, but this was simply too good of an opportunity to pass up. I've seen the company grow very rapidly in head count, sales, and quality of both product and process. Places like this, surrounded by highly skilled and enthusiastic people, are a great place to be. We're creating value every day and bringing it to our clients. That's key. You simply can't stay in business for long by playing a three-card Monte, shuffling money around and siphoning off dollars while not adding anything yourself. I think that's really what caused the economy to go topsy turvy - people looking to make a quick buck without doing any real work.
I can tell you that we're working like crazy here, adding value, and it's awesome.
(To those who wonder about where I was before - yes, they're doing quite well, and it's still a good place to be. There are other reasons for my move above and beyond the job itself. I've been lucky to work with great people at both places.)
Unemployment in a recession has always somewhat mystified me. There's a serious Catch-22 going on here. People need jobs, so they can make money to buy at least the basic essentials. Companies don't hire them because they don't have the money. The companies don't have the money because people aren't buying their stuff. People aren't buying their stuff because they don't have jobs.
Wait a minute.
Something's fundamentally wrong with this picture.
Here's how it's supposed to work: A company is making a great product that people want to buy. They hire great people to make more of it and sell more of it. Those people go and buy stuff they need from other companies. Those companies make money, and hire people themselves.
That's how it's working here at Compendium. We've got a great product, and we've got great people working here.
When companies stop looking at employees as their biggest cost and start looking at them as their revenue generators, they want to hire more of them. Without people, your business will wither and die. It really is that simple.
Paraskevidekatriaphobia is the fear of Friday the 13th, related to
triskaidekaphobia, fear of the number 13. This year is a rare one, in that there are actually
three Friday the 13ths in it. The next time this will happen is 2012, then 2015, and then not again until 2026, 11 years later. It only happens in years where the 13th of February falls on a Friday, and only if it's not a leap year, or if it's a leap year it could happen in January, April, and July. It's not magic, it's just patterns.
So let me really reach here for a way to tie this to our blogging software. Bear with me now.
Probably our key feature, the fundamental idea behind it, is compending. Compended blogs focus on specific keywords, pulling content from multiple authors into one easy to find place. Search engines will see a high concentration of relevant content tied to each of your compended blogs, and as a result, it will rank highly.
So how does it do it? We determine which posts should connect to which compended blog by the keywords that you, the user, have chosen to focus on. You don't have to tag your content or classify it. You just write. Our keyword strength meter gives you instant feedback so you know if your content should get compended. Nothing could be easier.
It's not magic, it's just patterns.
Nothing to be afraid of.
Technology invariably increases the power of those who have it. It's a two edged sword - when it's hard to replicate and expensive to make in the first place, it becomes something that only people who already have wealth and power will get. If it's easy and inexpensive to mass produce, it will become something everyone can use, which makes it an equalizer. There's a fine balance to be had here.
Blogging software is one of these equalizers. It winds up taking some of the power the traditional media used to have and putting in the hands of, well, everyone. Since everyone can now blog, how do you stand out from the crowd?
Use better blogging software, of course. Put some more power in your hands.
I read a lot. Maybe you do, too. You're certainly reading right now. In this weather I don't really like to be out driving around any more than I must. Combine those two and you might see why I like Amazon - buy books and get them in the mail - and I have to check my mail anyway.
But did you know that Amazon has some really cool features that software people like, beyond books? For a ridiculously small fee you can do things like run virtual machines on their servers, or store files there as well. One thing that they've recently started is what's known as a "content delivery network". Amazon has a lot of servers, all over the world. They can detect which of their server farms can get files to you the fastest (which is usually the one physically closest to you, but doesn't have to be), and then they can send you files from those servers.
Well, it turns out that if you are using Amazon to store files, it's pretty easy to set up to have them deliver files using this network, too. The process should be basically invisible to the consumer, if it's done right.
It can take some of the load off of your servers, and speed up pages for people using your site. It can only do static content - pictures, style sheets, html that doesn't change - but a lot of those are large files that eat up bandwidth.
In fact, we're doing this right now, starting today.
Quite the odd topic, isn't it?
Let's take a moment to think about it, though. What is it that you think of when you think of romance? Flowers, poetry, sunsets, nice notes, all of that. Perhaps marriage, or certainly some sort of lasting relationship.
If all you want is a one night stand, that's certainly possible. For some, that's all they want. But if you want something that lasts, there's a whole set of other things that goes on outside that really basic human interaction.
If you're building a business, it's almost certainly to build a fulfilling relationship with people. You add value by doing all sorts of things outside the most basic. To be sure, you could reduce it to a simple transaction, but when you do that, why would someone choose you over anyone else?
Why be interchangeable?
Be who you are as a business. Have a unique personality. Be thoughtful in what you do beyond the core.
Also, since I'm one of the engineering team here, let me just extend this to our software. Are there other blogging platforms out there? Of course - a field with no other entries is rare. But we've added a lot of other features to it outside just your basic posting capability - the keyword strength meter, keyword focus, and content ideas, to name a few. We've got plenty of other distinct features as a company, but let me stick to what I know best.
So, back to the point - if you want something that lasts, and you want to build relationships, don't just aim to be the cheapest, or even to only be the best at the one core thing for your business. Think about what you can do that makes you different.
Bring flowers.
Right now I am sure that we're all concerned about the economy. I know I am. First it was gas at over $4 a gallon, and now it's under $2. Sure, it's nice to pay less than half was I did earlier this year, but to me it's sending a scary signal - money isn't flowing. If people aren't buying products, then companies can't keep paying their employees, who then have no money to buy products...it's a vicious cycle.
How do you get out of a cycle like that? I can't say "Spend more money" if the money's not there to spend. But everyone still has needs, regardless. As a consumer, I have to eat, so I'm going to go to the store and buy what I need. As the company that makes the food I want to buy, someone is going to try really hard to get that money. But it's a total waste of their time, effort, and marketing dollars to try to get me to buy something I'm never even going to consider. There was a time in my life when baby food was of great importance to me. Now, it just isn't.
So it's about how you target your marketing. You want to reach the right people, and those people only want to see what's relevant to them. The web is a very important form of communication these days. It's how people find products they want, and you establish trust. A great way to establish trust is a personal touch. Blogging creates that personal touch. To get your blog in front of the right people, it needs to rank highly in search engines. I'm not talking about spamming people with things irrelevant to your products, I mean making it easy for people to find you when you have what they want and need.
It's about the mutually beneficial matching of supply and demand. The better you are at it, the higher ROI you will see. Combine that matching with the trust factor of a personal blog, and you can't help but get people what they want.
So what is a blogging platform, and why is it important?
Why pay for something when there are other things out there that are free? Or why not just do it in house?
For one thing, we have an amazing staff of people to help you through the setup process and keep you on track, but what I'm a part of, personally, is what goes on behind the scenes, so I can best speak to that. We have some awesome features you don't see in other blogging software systems, with more on the way. With our keyword strength meter and keyword cloud, it's easy to see what you should be blogging about. I'd love to talk about a couple things we have in the pipeline, but you'll just have to wait until they go live.
There are systems you could install yourself, but then you have to have someone on hand to maintain it. That's expensive. Our engineering team does work that maintains everyone's blogs, and adds features to all of them. A dedicated team like ours to work on a single company's blog system just wouldn't add up.
Remember the bit in Pulp Fiction when they're in a panic, and they call their boss, and he tells them to relax because "the Wolf is on it"?
That's us.
You've had this happen, I'm sure:
You're standing in a crowded room, carrying on a conversation with three other people, blotting out the background static of a dozen other conversations when, across the room, someone says your name. It's clear as a bell. Now you can suddenly hear everything that person's saying, and you want to know what they said about you, and why.
The human brain is an amazing filter of information. Our subconscious minds are constantly rejecting massive amounts of utterly irrelevant inputs. If they didn't, there's simply no way we could even function. (Incidentally, one of the theories as to why autistic people are paralyzed by human interaction is that they are unable to filter properly - everything is relevant to them.)
One of the biggest concerns about blogging is that it brings journalism to the common person. Now everyone has a voice. That's great, because every human should have the right to speak their mind. That said, I'm not going to find everything that everyone says to be interesting. Sorry, but I'm just not. With everyone speaking at once, I'm going to be just drowning in static, with no way at all to hear what I'm interested in.
Unless there's a filter. With a proper filter, I'm going to find the things I'm interested in. That's what search engines are for, and SEO. I don't believe in "gaming the system", which causes spammy results to bubble to the top. That renders the whole thing useless. What I do believe is what's been said many times - "Content is king." A properly designed system can bring the attention of search engines to relevant content.
Your brain is a search engine. Your name is one of the keywords it's constantly searching for.
You may not be aware of this, but we release new software a lot. By a lot, I mean often - every week.
How do we manage this? We use "Scrum". It's a method of project management that keeps us on track very, very tightly. It's a little bit nonstandard here in that we actually have two overlapping cycles going on at once. We have a one week tactical sprint that we use for bug fixes and minor enhancements, and we have a four week strategic cycle for larger enhancements.
This lets us get things done really, really quickly. We are never far off track.
It's like driving a car. You don't drive a car by just pointing it at your destination and letting go of the steering wheel - there are lots of little course corrections that take place en route.
We're tracking all these changes with product backlogs and Trac, and we have an internal preview to let people know what's coming.
What does this mean to you, outside of Compendium? It means that we are not sitting on our laurels, having already built a great product. Instead, we're improving it all the time. Sometimes the changes are invisible to you, but the system is more robust, faster, more maintainable. Other times it's relevant to our customers, like when our templating system improves and CSS becomes drastically simpler. To our readers, content might become more accessible or more easily found via search engines.
To me, though, it means I'm in a team of professionals who really know and love our craft, and I think that's awesome.
A while back, I wrote about thermodynamics and getting your message across to readers, and how our software in particular makes it easier for people to find you. By compending your posts into topical blogs rather than just by author, search engines will index your content better, and as a result there is more relevant content for your readers.
But there's another way our software is really useful. You, the reader, can't see the interface I'm using right now to write this (unless you're already a client), but it's pretty cool. Off to the right is a list of keywords that Compendium wants to be ranked highly in. It is sorted alphabetically by default, but with a single click it can be sorted by number of posts associated with it. This lets me easily see if there are particular keywords that are being neglected, or are popular here. I can also use it for ideas if I'm drawing a blank.
Another cool feature is a keyword strength bar. It starts out red, with a value of zero, which makes sense. As I write, it dynamically finds keywords in my content, the number goes up, and the bar shifts from red to green. There's also a one-click spelling checker integrated into the editor.
So what exactly does this have to do with thermodynamics and pain points? Pain is a barrier to doing something. When barriers are lowered, that thing becomes more likely. If you want people to blog, make it easy. Some people just really don't like to write, but if it's less painful, they will do it more. Giving people tools that give them ideas along with immediate feedback on their post make it a better experience.
Technology like this is useful, cool, and fun to work on. That's a big reason why I'm here.
We are in the process of doing some real improvements to our software, and in the process of testing it we decided we needed a *lot* of screenshots under a wide variety of browsers. That's inherently a really tedious process, and let's face it - I'm a programmer because I hate doing things by hand.
There *had* to be a better way.
So,
Google being my friend and all, I looked. And looked. There are several pay sites out there that can provide this, but none had an API, and the browsers offered are really limited. Then I came across
Browsershots.
That rocks.
Go there. Seriously. There are a *ton* of browsers supported, and it's free. Ok, there's a small catch - apparently it's not actually free if you want to use the API. I'm ok with that, though, as it's not expensive at all, and it's ridiculously useful.
Now, the downside - sorry, Johann - the documentation for the API is painful. It took some real work to realize that it's not talking about XML-RPC types at all, but Python types. We don't use Python here, we use PHP5, so I had to go through 2 layers of translation to get a working client for it, and authentication was unpleasant.
But we made it work, and thanks to my prototyping and
Blake's code-fu, we now have a very handy script that takes screenshots of a bunch of our sites with all the browsers we support, plus a couple we don't.
Another very cool thing about Browsershots - it's open source. If you want to help his project by allowing your system to take screenshots, you can install a "shotfactory", but even cooler, if you want to do the whole thing yourself and not kill his server and bandwidth, you can install a "shotserver" and create your own browser shot farm.
Thanks, Johann. You rock.
As I mentioned, I got my degree in 1999. I have a PhD in Chemistry, which sounds like a really strange thing to have as a background for writing blogging software, so that's a story for a different time. Just bear with me, though, as that piece of information is important background for what I'm going to talk about.
I tend to think in terms of science. Chemistry, physics, thermodynamics. Not stuff that most people sit and ponder, and I'm usually pretty ok with that. I was thinking about web traffic, and how it relates to what I already know, and I came up with an analogy. Imagine that you have a big stew of chemicals. All kinds of random stuff thrown into a vat and mixed up. There are going to be an incredibly wide range of reactions taking place in there, some of it good, some of it bad. Some of it will be stuff that you actually want to have happen. As your original reagents get used up, eventually the reactions wind down and you get a bunch of products. The reactions that went on in the vat were competing with each other to use up what you started with. Maybe two totally different sets of products needed the same building blocks, and one won out at the expense of the other. That's called competing pathways.
Now throw in a catalyst. A catalyst is something that itself doesn't get used up in the reactions, it just changes how fast a particular reaction goes. Maybe you can throw in a catalyst that helps the reaction you want, and it can use up the building blocks it needs faster than the competing pathway, and you wind up with more of the product you wanted. It doesn't have to slow down the other reaction, just speed up the one you want.
I'm a big fan of win/win solutions, but I'm also very aware that we live in a finite world. There's a limited amount of time, and a limited (but growing) amount of web traffic. You can build a great website, but that by itself won't necessarily drive traffic. There are a lot of eyeballs out there, looking at the web, and you want to get as many relevant ones looking at your site as possible. Those are your building blocks. Good tools can act as a catalyst for this. You don't have to damage anyone else's business to do this, you are just making it more likely for people to find their way to you, and enhancing your share.
That's what we do. We provide a catalyst.
