If you are reading this, then this blog has been around for 5 years. The post was set to automatically publish at the 5 year mark. Technically my first post was September 16, 2006 entitled “Hello World” which you can find here, but it was nothing other than a test. At the time, I was experimenting with blogs and was not sure if I wanted to participate in having a blog or not. My two main reasons for considering starting a blog were:
Practice my writing skills: I always struggled with writing essays or stories in school and to this day I do not consider myself a good writer.
A place to record my interests: I constantly read, research security and other topics of interest and I wanted a way to keep track and reference items of interest. This seemed like a way to do this and to share it with anyone else that might be interested.
After lots of thinking and quite a few conversations with friends I was on the fence. Dan Siemon convinced me that it was a good thing. Dan has very strong engineering skills which are combined with an understanding of how technology affects people. He is also a past co-worker and a present good friend. In a conversation over coffee, Dan stated that social media gives the opportunity for people to quickly post truths and lies about anyone. Once it is out there, it is difficult if not impossible to erase. Having an active history that you control, showing what you have accomplished, your opinions and experience, your relationships and associations, all help to greatly reduce the impact of one person or group potentially spreading false accusations. That convinced me. 5 years later, here we are.
I have read and researched into the multitude of ways to run a blog. Some people just write about all things in their daily lives, what they do, what they are interested in, what concerns them. Others keep their blog very focused on a particular topic or area. My blog initially started out with a network security focus (since that is what I have been doing for a career and continue to do to this day). But I have interests outside of security as well. As such this blog has grown and it is not a single focused blog. But it isn’t a random blog either. If you had to pick a single focus to describe my blog, it would be “Things that Michael is passionate, interested or amused about”. Generally posts fall into a few large categories:
- Network Security - technical.
- Network Security – implications, impact, concepts
- People (behaviour and profiling)
- Information Privacy and how information connects and relates
- Leadership and Management.
The list above is not exhaustive but it covers most of the topics of the posts. I am working as time permits to reduce my Categories and tags to closely as possible match list to the above.
I have been asked on occasion questions such as why do I blog? Do I have lots of traffic to my blog? What do I intend to do with my blog? Lots of expert bloggers have articles with suggestions of ways to increase build traffic to your blog, increase your subscribers, or make a business out of your blog. These were never my goals or intent and still are no t. It is a place for me to practice my writing and keep track of what interests me. If something I write interests someone and they wish to discuss, great. If they don’t that is okay too. It really is just a place on the Internet — my place. I’ve enjoyed the last 5 years, and will continue to post for the foreseeable future and/or until it no longer fits my life.
Photo courtesy of Highlighthealth.com
