The Fearless Blogger

service level agreement (“sla”)

Why an SLA? If nothing else, throughout my numerous jobs over the years, I’d say the prevailing lesson learned is that it all comes down to managing expectations. With that in mind, before I go any further, I was thinking it might be a good time to at least share what I expect from this blog – and hopefully open a dialogue with anyone reading it to find out what you expect as well.

I’ve split this into four key areas: Topics, Tone, Technique & Timing.

Disclaimer:  This is still a bit of a work in progress – as I go along, I’m sure I’ll be adding to it!

Update (5/28/10): Yeah, so I know this is crazy long & could use some streamlining/reformatting. I’ll get to it one day.  But I must admit, a year & a half after writing this, & I still feel committed to most of the stuff I wrote here! So, with few exceptions, for now it stays as is :-)

The Fearless Blogger Service Level Agreement (“SLA”)

Topics

As you can see from the categories up top, I’ve simplified my life and the world around me to three primary activities: create, connect, consume, plus the all-important “etc.” category.

I’m not going to get overly detailed, but at a high level, these are the kind of topics you can expect to see me blogging about:

CREATE

As in creativity. My interests focus chiefly on web/graphic design, web/software development, film/editing, and photography. What are your interests?  Update: Recently my focus has been on creating a healthy & balanced life for myself.  In other words, I’m choosing to make creating the life I want a higher priority than creating websites. As I write about my experiences, posts related to self-empowerment, goal-setting, health, etc. will go here.

CONNECT

As in with other people. Social media, internet culture, websites, iphones, trends, volunteer opportunities, world events go here.  Update: For those readers who may not already know: I have ADHD and OCD.  I choose not to let diagnoses define me.  Still, I embrace that they’ve each had an integral influence on my life experience and perspective. One of my goals is to share a story others like me can connect with: We can feel stronger when we know we’re not alone.  What I’m getting to is that posts related to mental health, ADHD, OCD , disabilities, public health & welfare will be included here.

CONSUME

As in the stuff we buy, read, watch, and eat. This means pop culture, tv shows, ways to save money, and all the other things we tend to ingest through our eyes, ears, and mouths. No update really needed here.  If you haven’t noticed already, you’ll find a bit of “Team CoCo” related posts here!

ETC.

This is where the kitchen sink goes. :-) To avoid having the blog equivalent of my “scary room” (more on that one of these days!), if I find too many things are going here, I’ll have to reconsider my categories. But for now, this is where random quotes, photos of my cats, daily twitter digests (more on that later too) and random musing  go.

Tone

To quote N*SYNC: “It’s gonna be me.” I guess something else I learned from my numerous jobs (and you’ve probably just learned by my inclusion of an N*SYNC lyric) is I tend to express myself and do things in my own way. Trying to change/temper/contro/mitigate that never lasts long; and at 37 years old, I don’t see it as a good use of energy anyhow.

My writing style is casual, conversational, and I’m a bit wordy (yes, just a bit – enough comments from the peanut gallery out there!). I generally express myself through humor – sometimes self-depracating, often sarcastic. I don’t think casual/conversational and grammatically correct are mutually exclusive, but casual occasionally does trump Strunk & White. Spelling, on the other hand, should not be sacrificed – so please feel free to call me out on any mistakes!

But you’ll find this all out on your own. More important – make that most important – is that a blog, unlike a newspaper or tv show, is a community. A blog is not me telling you things – it’s my place to share things. Everyone has a voice here. This is not my stage or soapbox. This is my community.  Make that our community.

Yes, it’s yours too.  And all of us can make it one thats comfortable for everyone.

this is a blog that ROCKs:

Respectful

We all may not agree or share the same opinion; but we can certainly respect each other’s right to have their own views. I’m an extremely opinionated person. As someone who’s also a bit fickle, I respect that other people may feel differently than I do at the moment – that’s what keeps the world interesting. Please bear that in mind when responding to comments you may not agree with. There’s a person behind that comment. Respect them, and their right to their opinion.

Open

I’d intended to have “Honesty” as an element here, but it took away from the catchy acronym.

Did you see that? What I just did? I was open with you about my intentions. I’ll continue to do that – while toeing the line between candidness/full disclosure and TMI/overshare.

Acronym attractiveness aside, I also feel one can be honest without being open, but not open without being honest. I guess you could be open about lying, but don’t think the lies could be considered examples of being open. What do you think?

Collaborative (also Community and Conversation)

I’m getting into labeling things – so let’s call this the “Three C’s”. These means three things to me:

1. Dialogue. As mentioned above, this blog is a place to share, not to broadcast. That means my expectation of you is that if you have something to say, say it. Commenting is the easiest way to do this, but you can also use the contact form if you’re shy, or contact me at any of the other places you can find me online (you’ll find links in the sidebar). Also, as you may have noticed, I’ve included a polling feature (“what say you?”) in the right sidebar. Please take a moment and weigh in on the latest poll when you get a chance.
2. Invitation to be Fearless. Taking that a step further, I’m inviting anyone who’s interested to be a guest blogger. Whether you have a full time blog and are looking to expand your audience; a developer or designer who wants to take a stab at writing a tutorial, or just another person like me who generally plays the role of reader, you have a standing invitation at The Fearless Blogger to write a guest post. Just contact me if you’re interested. My hope is that this will not only provide readers with diverse viewpoints and information, but will also give a voice to those who may have something to say but may not have or want their own place to say it.
3. Be Generous. The internet’s a big place and there’s room for everyone. Too often people hesitate to share their thoughts or advice because they are afraid of someone stealing their idea, or wonder why they should give their advice for free when many people would pay good money for it. I’m not saying to start spilling trade secrets. But the more we open up the dialogue, the more we feed each others ideas; the more nourishment we add to the global consciousness. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that one of the world’s great geniuses, Albert Einstein, worked at a patent office. I’m by no means suggesting his ideas were unoriginal. What I am saying is they were incredibly inspired. And I believe, in the pre-Information Age, he had access to far more inspirational food, if you will, than the average bear.

Kind

“When given the choice between being right or being kind, always choose kind.”

Dr. Wayne Dyer referenced that quote, and it stuck with me. Here’s the deal – Call me out if my content is weak. Point out spelling errors. Give me design and usability pointers. If it’s coming from the right place, I’ll love you for it. Heck – even if it’s not, I’m not going to hold it against you.

Sometimes when creating an open environment, people say things we don’t like. Sometimes on blogs, people will leave comments just to mix things up (these are often referred to as sock puppets or trolls). I don’t plan to get in the habit of censoring – or even overly moderating – what people say here. But there is no room for hate here.

That’s important to me. So I’ll say it again: There’s no room for hate here.

So before you fire off a response to someone’s comment, at least take a moment to consider your motive. Is it to create a stir? Show off your mad coding skills? Shoot someone’s opinion down? In order to keep the “Three C’s” alive, far be it from me to discourage you. But at least remember we’re all in this together, and kindness can go a long way. In short, mean people suck – let’s all get along!

Timing

In the spirit of openness, I’m not the best with I don’t particularly care for keeping to schedules.   But So, after a bit of soul-searching, and a reality check, I’m tentatively committing to the following not going to commit to writing any weekly features.¹

To keep things interesting (for me at least, hopefully you too!) I’ll be posting random quotes, links, etc. throughout the week too.

After the first couple of months, I’ll revisit this to see how it’s working for everyone.

Technique

In addition to formal posts, I often use twitter to share links & my random musings throughout the day.  You can view those in my “tweets” section in the sidebar.  I’m also going to At some point, I may start posting little “postlets” throughout the week with freebies, fun stuff and any links/musings I can’t compress into under 140 characters – for now, you can find them housed on my tumblr blog: Fearless Blogger Sidenotes.

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1 In case you’re curious what weekly posts I’d, at one point, planned to include, here’s what used to be there:

Monday spotlight: Each Monday, I will spotlight a particular blog, website, service or product that I think is especially noteworthy and feel compelled to share.  You’ll be able to see the spotlighted post of the week at the top of the homepage.  Recent spotlights can also be found on the spotlight tab in the sidebar.

Wednesday series: Each Wednesday’s posting will relate to a number of ongoing series I have planned.  Topics will range from introductory information about using the internet, to graphic design resources, to SEO techniques for bloggers.   If there’s something you’d like to see included, or would like to write a guest post, please contact me.