Ideas of March

Ideas of march is a nice idea, especially when you consider the recent moves by Twitter.  Controlling your own data on your website gives you more freedom.  Services like Identi.ca should help alleviate the pain of moving from Twitter, but your own blog is still your own place.

I used to write a lot more than I do now.  I thought I had interesting things to say back then.  I was a bit more naive, and a bit less intelligent, and much less wise.  Today I suffer an inverse problem: fearing I know to little.  ConFoo helped to solve that problem.  I came away realising I know more than I give myself credit for.  I also discovered that I could hold meaningful conversations with other hackers.    The problem was, I've been sheltering myself from the local developer community for so long, for one reason or another, and I've lost that sense of connection with other like minded developers in a non-work setting.

Ideas of march and ConFoo make me realise that the most important thing for a developer is community, and losing that will cause you to lose your way.  The most fun and successful I've been has always been a result of community efforts.  It's realising and understanding this that makes me realise more than ever that I need to get out and meet the local community, be involved more online, and contribute back what knowledge I have.

So, here's my pledge, for the ideas of march, to publish more, comment more, and contribute back to the community as a whole.