What’s going on here?

In my world, it’s never too early for meta commentary! First post? Bring it on!

Here’s the deal. I’ve been planning to reserve this domain for a while now. I tried snagging the .com, but it’s being squatted. I didn’t have all the necessary pieces put together. No theme (a custom scratch-built theme is a must!), no content (must have a dozen articles pre-written!), no host (need to find the best – 2048-bit encrypted SSH, 8 million SQL DBs, infinity +1 bandwidth!). For those of you who know me, you know I don’t like to do anything without knowing exactly how it will end. It’s been one of my biggest failings.

Well, I was flying to Los Angeles last week, and I had brought several podcasts with me to keep myself entertained. One of them was a two- or three-week-old Diggnation podcast. Kevin Rose was talking about the new Digg bar or whatever and he uttered a concept I remember from years ago:

Release early. Release often. Iterate.

It’s an old programming adage – comes from the Linux community. That’s how they do things. Release early. Release with bugs. Release beta code. Release alpha code. Release often. Weekly builds. Daily builds. Iterate. Add a feature. Squash the bugs. Collect feedback. Tweak it. Add another feature. Etc, etc.

And look at how successful this has been. Google does it. Salesforce.com does it. Firefox. Pocket God. Warhammer.

My boss and I have a joke about always giving 80%. He’ll walk by my cube and ask, “Still giving your 80%?” It’s a joke, but it’s not far from reality. I don’t have the time to give 100%. If I put 100% into everything we do, I’ll never finish everything that needs to be done, and that’s as good as giving 10%.

So I decided to throw caution to the wind and go live, with nothing more than the default theme and the strength of my writing to bouy the site. I expect my devoted fan base of one (‘allo Mum!) will appreciate my decision.

That’s not to say I’m not working on a snazzy theme/logo/style for the site …

-a.