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February 06, 2007
Many Startings (aka State of The Blog #2)
One of the concluding chapters in the Lord of the Rings trilogy is called "Many Partings". In it, the great war with Sauron and his evil posse has just concluded and the characters on the good side are all bidding farewell to each other, with exhausted reserves but renewed alliances. In keeping with this blog's Lord of the Rings connection--limited pretty much to just the domain name--this post is titled "Many Startings" because it marks a few new beginnings:- A new career. My three years as a software developer in the finance industry were pretty good. I got to tinker with some fun technology, sometimes even on a fairly deep level. I got to be part of influential teams in both large and small companies. Day after day though, I would come home and find that although it paid the bills (and college loan payments and all that), it didn't really push my buttons. So, over the past year, I've been trying to find out what does. Want to guess before I tell you? Let me give you a hint -- you're reading it! I looked deep within myself and found that one of the best parts of my day was when I would blog after I got home from work. Somehow, after a year of blogging, writing English started to feel much more natural than writing C#. A gig where I could write a lot about areas I know, namely technology, would really hit the sweet spot. And so, off I went looking.
I just started as an industry analyst at The 451 Group, an independent analyst firm that researches and analyzes trends and competition in the tech industry for a senior technology executive audience. The bulk of our clients are venture capitalists, early adopters of IT, financial analysts and the executive management of technology vendors. My official title for now is "Analyst, Software Development and Tools". I'll draw on my personal software development experience with a wide variety of platforms to understand the strategic issues in software development today and comment on them. As time goes on, I may expand my coverage areas depending on my interest and appetite.
Although The 451 Group is technically in the same business as Gartner, IDC and Forrester, it is different in two very important ways that have me really excited. First, they are independent. They don't accept payment for writing favorable or unfavorable reports about companies. They don't broker technology deals or provide technology recommendations. This mode of functioning provides the highest amount of detachment and objectivity in the increasingly high-stakes business of technology. Second, they grok open source. They have had a research focus specifically on open source and how it is being adopted in enterprise and commercial settings. Open source is and will continue to be huge and I am really excited about building up personal expertise in how it is used in enterprises. Although I will now be writing English rather than code for most of my day, I'll remain a developer-type at heart. I'll probably tinker with personal code projects in my free time that you may hear about on this blog. Writing code for yourself is always fun! - "Ironically", a new blog. Lately, I've started to notice that a lot of writers use the word ironically when it is really not called for. So, taking inspiration from a parallel effort built around the word literally, I've started 'Ironically, a weblog' to track abuses of the word ironically. It's not brand spanking new -- I started it just after the U.S. midterm elections in November. It will be pretty light on content; its entries will only feature quotes containing the word ironically and then knock the author for using it incorrectly. It's more an eclectic gallery for people who occasionally indulge in sanctimonious pedantry, like myself, rather than a full-featured personal journal. Stop by Ironically sometime, if you feel like it.
- Second year summary and possible changes in focus. This blog is now over two years old. 2006 was a great year for me, for I was named Person Of The Year by Time magazine, along with you. I'll take this opportunity to thank all my readers and commenters (even the viagra, phentermine and vioxx ones!) for stopping by. In the last year, the number of visitors to my blog has grown tenfold. The 'value' of my blog went up fivefold. Vishy's media empire? Far from it, but I wouldn't exactly complain if it grows at this rate every year. My pieces got reddited and stumbled-upon, in addition to being featured in a few online publications and blogs. I got visitors from 144 countries; some of them were even zealous Mac users! According to certain demographic prediction tools, almost two thirds of my visitors are male.
Because The 451 Group's research is available via subscription, the reports I write obviously won't be freely accessible from this blog. For the same reason, I will also not write posts here about anything I cover in a professional capacity. While I will still write about general-interest technology topics, India and Indian English, my posts will now also feature one of my prime obsessions, food. I don't think of myself as a classic foodie because they just go where their Zagat Guide tells them to go. I prefer to explore restaurants and home cooking ideas on my own journeys and report on my findings.
Posted by Vishy at February 6, 2007 12:38 AM
Comments
Vishy is awesome!
Posted by: Raven Zachary at February 6, 2007 07:50 PM
This is all so interesting Vishy! Godspeed!
Posted by: Salma Azhar at February 15, 2007 11:34 AM