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Vikash Kodati
Vikash Kodati

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BLOG! WHY BOTHER?

Its been on my mind – for a few months now – to revive my interest in blogging and up my ante around this act. Given the hiatus, topic selection proved harder than I first thought. A few topics sifted through my mind as possible candidates, but my train of thought wandered through multiple paths, viewpoints, perspectives, all of which made me to question, “Why am I doing this”.

I wanted to take a step back and reflect, why I should be blogging and after spending the time and effort whether it would still have the same impact, as I thought/assumed it would. Times have changed, information consumption patterns have evolved, is traditional blogging one of the authentic distribution channels? What do I want to achieve? A few answers came

Over the years, I have acquired skills through my own experiences and I had like them to find expression.

I had like to argue a viewpoint and/or debate the pros and cons of multiple perspectives of a given story.

I want to reinforce my own knowledge on topics and figured that authentic writing is one of the ways to showcase expertise and in the process build my brand.

I want to build a community of like minded people, debate and bounce ideas off of them, kindred spirits having a lot in common.

I want to keep the experience educational and fun where my articles are a measure of my progress and concrete enough so that it helps others who are on a similar journey.

I had like to publish articles on topics like Digital Transformation, and Programming to start with.

When it comes to delivering an idea, I still believe a written blog is a good medium (compared to audio and video) because that text is searchable, less maintenance and less noise. However there are a plethora of platforms like medium, wordpress, linkedin, dev.to, and many others related to one’s niche skillset. I am not entirely clear on how to manage this other than to publish the same content on all relevant platforms.

It also feels unwise to ignore platforms like youtube, twitch, soundcloud, podcasts, etc… so I would experiment them based on the context of the content. Experimentation is the key and I should find the right balance in due course.

So whats next? I want to pick one topic and blog to the end of it. Narrowing down on one, is not something that comes easily to me, given my “generalist” nature (a blog topic by itself for another day). It may be tactful and practical to identify parts of my daily work and blog about my journey in accomplishing them. So stay tuned!

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