community

State of the Union : Blogging, Involvement and Future Goals

Rion Williams

• 3 min read

Well it has been a bit over two months since I launched this site and began my trek of giving back and I will say that I am still having fun doing it. I thought I would write up a quick summary of how things are going and where I hope that they will be by the end of this year.

Blogging

Probably the most surprisingly enjoyable part of my community contributions has been actually blogging. I’ve been incredibly surprised at the number of actual users that I have been in contact with through this blog and the abundance of opportunities that have presented themselves since launching it. I can’t thank everyone enough for visiting and continuing to stop by.

About the Blog

  • Hello there everybody! - Since launching in early February, the site has received over 2000 visitors from over 100 countries.
  • Slow and Steady - Averaging around 8 posts a month (if I can ever get some of those damn drafts out of the Draft stage as there are currently around 14 of them).
  • Impressed with WordPress - I've been quite impressed with WordPress thus far and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to start a blog.

Website Traffic throughout March

Community Involvement

Aside from blogging, I have previously mentioned the main bulk of my involvement has been done at the ASP.NET Forums and I would say that it has shifted towards a borderline addiction, however I suppose that as long as it is actually helping others, that is alright. Again, I would like to thank all of the wonderful people over there and many of the friends and acquaintances that I have gained since becoming a regular there.

I still occasionally visit Stack Overflow, however it is mostly for some of the more administrative duties (e.g up-voting, approving edits, revisions, and thread closures) when the forums get a bit slow.

The Facts, Jack

  • All-Star - Reached the All-Star Status on the ASP.NET Forums with 15,000+ Points (currently averaging 25-40 posts and ~15+ answered questions a day) and I don’t plan on stopping any time soon.
  • Passive Reputation - As I mentioned earlier, Stack Overflow is certainly not a place I spend a majority of my time at. Although thanks to the wonderful concept of passive reputation, I've gained around ~2,500 since beginning this conquest, which is just a few hours for the great Jon Skeet, but it's something.
  • Blog Outsourcing - I've received several e-mails regarding writing a few things on some other blogs although I am considering doing some things like this in the future, I would prefer to see if I can actually get this place up and running first.
  • Back to School - I've been asked to serve on a university committee regarding a Computer Science program and possibly migrating to C# as opposed to C or at least introducing C# as an elective series of courses.
  • Mic Check, 1, 2, 3. - A few speaking engagements have presented themselves regarding some of the content of both these blog posts and within my interactions with others on the forums that I frequent so I hope to begin doing a few of these in the future.

Goals

I didn't really want to put some of these things in writing as they will basically force me to pursue them, but here are a few goals that I would like to achieve by the end of this year :

  • 50,000 + points and 7,500+ posts on the ASP.NET Forums
  • 4,000+ questions answered on the ASP.NET Forums
  • 20,000+ reputation on Stack Overflow
  • 40+ blog posts published
  • 15,000+ blog visitors

I think those should be plenty sufficient for this year and who knows, hopefully I can keep something like that up for the next few years :)