Your Blog is The Engine of Community

In a time where this is much gnashing of teeth around the meaning of community, what being on the "inside" vs. the "outside" means, I want to take a moment to remind my fellow blog writers, blog readers, blog commenters what makes it all work.

You.

Not a secret society or old boy's network, not a select few or someone knighted by The Queen. It's the nameless, faceless web search result that makes community work.

I search all the time for help on the internet. I find blogs, tweets, Stack Overflow, MSDN and more. More often than not when I find the answer I seek it's on YOUR blog, not mine. Often it's not on a big company employee's blog or that of the chosen few. The answer was put out on a blog, without ask of payment or recognition, by a 25-year old Persian student, or a 60-year old exploring .NET, or a high school student with a passion for open source.

I, and this blog, was that random search result for at least 5 of the last 10 years. Someone searches for help and finds my little corner of the internet. Write a few blog posts a week, with useful content, consistently, for ten years. Then write some more. All free, all because you feel good putting it out there.

I would encourage you all to blog more. Tweet less. Blogs are owned by you. They are easily found, easily linked to, and great conversations happen with great blog posts. The river of social media rushes on and those conversations are long forgotten. A great blog post is forever. Today's real-time social media is quickly forgotten.

Don't be a meme, but a movement.

Blog your opinions. Blog your cool project, or your latest useful function or library. Don't blog if it feels like work. Blog and get excited when someone comments. Often the comments are more fun and more useful than the post itself. Be passionate, but not rude. Point out failings, but suggest solutions. Organize. Invent.

Be constructive, be helpful, be kind. Make your blog posts not too long, not too short, not too stream-of-consciousness and not too terse. Remember your elementary writing classes. Have a thesis, make your argument, restate your thesis.

Share because you want to. Share because you want to help, but also because you want to help yourself. Share not for the recognition but for the love of teaching.

It takes a village, dear reader, to be a community. It's you, and me and no one in between. Now, go write, create, commit.