I have reluctantly decided to move my main blogging from the WebSphere Community Blog to here. I have chosen to do so after much thought. Over the last few years, I have spent a fair amount of time encouraging multiple authors to blog on the WebSphere Community blog seeing as the best place to have the most relevant content for WebSphere customers. Even so, I have decided to move my blogging here for the following reasons:
1. I have returned my focus to performance at IBM (I can't seem to get away from performance and I do truly love doing performance related work). While performance is interesting to all WebSphere customers, I doubt that as I start to ramp up performance discussions that all topics will be just WebSphere focused. Therefore, I don't want to put such blog posts on the WebSphere Community Blog.
2. WebSphere is such a broad portfolio these days. Much of the WebSphere Community Blog is focused on what we refer to as the WebSphere Foundation (the application servers, the data/caching grids, etc). In my current role I will be focusing across the entire WebSphere portfolio and beyond.
3. More and more, IBM has started to release solutions that aren't tied to a specific brand (WebSphere). I am working on such products and solutions and again not a great fit for the WebSphere blog.
4. I have changed focus and jobs within IBM four or so times within the last ten years. I would like this blog to stay around forever, regardless of what focus I have.
5. To be brutally honest, one of the best parts of being on the WebSphere Community blog was the traffic. When there is a search for WebSphere blog on Google, the WebSphere Community Blog is the first entry. We see a steady stream of traffic there. I think over time, people reading blogs starting from the top down will change. I know I have a steady stream of followers on Twitter and expect that no matter where my content is, my followers will see it and if its the best content on the topic, specific posts will show in Google searches.
6. All the above points have discouraged me posting in the last year or so. I'm hoping making the move will encourage me to start blogging again.
Let's see how active I become on this blog. I will still try to cross post WebSphere related posts, but for now, lets hope iSpyker.blogspot.com thrives all on it's own.
