Blogspeed

In my long ago undergrad days at Michigan State, we had a local radio station, Q-106, that was notorious for its riske' adverts and great tunes during a period when "alternative rock" was emerging and "grunge" was in its infancy in Seattle. In one 15 second spot, the Announcer cheekily quipped in his best lounge-lizard voice:

Hey... it's not the size [of your antenna] ... it's the frequency [of your signal] Q-106!

Fast-forward twenty years as I sit thinking about how often I should blog and is less really more.

For the political bloggers and other professional pundits, it is not uncommon to post multiple times during the day, especially on busy news days. For the "tweens" on myspace and such, once a day might suffice. Professional columnists who need to fact-check, to compile references, and to build convincing arguments need to take a bit longer -- perhaps more like a weekly or bi-weekly column. That said, being a blogging newbie, there did seem to me to be an inordinate pressure to crank out posts. The more that I thought about it, the more it seemed that posting for posting sake would just lead to lots of posts like... well... like this one!

Then I read this little blog by Eric Kintz at Hewlett-Packard. It made a lot of practical sense, and (ribbing Mr. Kintz) I would so not want Jess to be "Web 1.0", too. I concluded that ..."it's the frequency!" just might not hold anymore.

This then is my initial goal:

• At the very least I will aim to post one in-depth blog per week, often contributed by a Guest Blogger TBA. The topic will always be strongly Jess-related and more like an essay or article of hopefully useful information. More formal and less prosy in style. Quality over quantity.
  
• I will abstain from consuming bandwidth daily unless a useful subtopic materializes. Expect it to be at least tangentially related to Jess (i.e., my research, other folks research, my consulting, business rules, rule-engines, or rule-based expert systems, etc.). Here, I'll relax a bit, sip a coffee, and chat with you about the field.
  
• I will post any important breaking news as soon as I know about it.

Epilogue

Extrapolating my opening metaphor, a friend innocently suggested that I only post "at noon" so as to "...quickly disseminate" my information and get on with my day...

Oh dear!! I shall henceforth check all loaded metaphors at the door. -JM