Thoughts from RWE 2008 final keynote

Just got finished up with a Rich Web Experience conference today, where the final *scheduled* keynote speaker--Jared Richardson--made some very good points about getting your ideas out there both for earning some name recognition and for being able to get to them yourself some time in the future when you may need them. He suggested blogging (and I wonder just how many blogs are getting started up right now :)) as a great way to start pushing your information out there.

One of the things he suggested is blogging anything that's taken you more than 10 or 15 minutes to figure out. The idea is that if it took you some time to figure out, it'll take someone else some time to figure out, and by posting it on your blog, you'll have access in to it in the future and, if people find it useful, then you'll be getting some exposure. Enough exposure, and it might lead to other things.

He also suggested getting involved in open source projects, not just in starting them up or becoming a leader or main contributor from the get go, but starting small. Pick a bug and fix it. Or, even better, do something no one else wants to do, like write documentation. It's a good way to get involved and to start getting your name out there.

The other interesting thing he mentioned is starting a personal Wiki. Basically, it becomes a repository of ideas that you have, that eventually you can go back and flesh out. When you get an idea for an article (or anything else), you can basically just create a post with a title in it. Then you can go back and fill in the content as you get the time and inclination.

A few other really good points he made:

• if a goal doesn't effect your behavior today, it's not a good goal (my interpretation: do something today to move yourself forward.)
• if you want to write a book, a book is made of chapters, a chapter is made of sections, a section is pretty much an article, and what's an article but a glorified blog post?
• get out there and teach/speak to really learn something (and get more exposure)
• write and post short tutorials as you learn to do things. Those short tutorials also become good entry points for people learning to do something and get you some more exposure.

All in all, it was a great talk, probably the best of the keynote speeches, and worth sticking around after lunch for :).