Here’s an interesting blog entry: Are you afraid to blog? by Robert Scoble (found via Jim Grisanzio of Sun). It’s a must read for corporate bloggers, although it doesn’t really cover the area of personal blogging, unless perhaps you are trying to market yourself.

I’ve embarked on a few public personal blogs in the past and abandoned them all after a short time. I guess I felt as if I’d shared too much of my own life that was ultimately of no real interest to anyone else anyway. So yes, I guess I am afraid to blog to some extent, on a personal level.

On more general topics such as politics, it’s not that I don’t want to express myself (and I have), it’s more an issue of time and focus. Writing does not come easily to me, and I’m not able to breezily whip up sharp paragraphs on whatever thoughts happen to be lurking in my mind. To write about an issue, I would need to first be sure of my research, then spend significant amounts of time and energy trying to construct an articulate, well constructed essay. The end result is never great, but it’s usually something I can live with.

But this kind of writing takes away both time and energy that I’d rather currently spend on more technical tasks relating to kernel development and security. I’m continually amazed at how much smarter and more experienced the people around me are, both at Red Hat and in the FOSS communities. Dealing with people with such giant brains all day is a truly humbling experience. To a large extent, for the foreseeable future, I feel that I need to continue to focus on expanding technical skills and knowledge, gaining more experience. This means not doing some other things that also take up a lot of energy, including any really concerted attempt at writing.

So I’m not exactly sure what to expect from this blog. It won’t be too personal, nor will it likely be a vehicle for deep observations and pontifications. (Probably much to the relief of anyone reading this). I don’t really feel like being part of Red Hat marketing, although I can’t guarantee that I won’t mention work specific things that could be construed as such, perhaps correctly.

So what is left to discuss? It’s kind of like Amateur Radio, where the rules in some countries exclude discussions of any real interest. For example, in the US, the FCC rules include:

§97.117 International communications.

Transmissions to a different country, where permitted, shall be made in plain language and shall be limited to messages of a technical nature relating to tests, and, to remarks of a personal character for which, by reason of their unimportance, recourse to the public telecommunications service is not justified.

Well, hopefully it won’t be that bad.