Steve's Scribbles...

No One Knows My Plan 1997

Monday, May 5, 1997

Why the dancing, shouting
why the shrieks of pain
...
I want to tell you
you my mirror
you my iron bars
No one understands
No one knows my plan
-- "No One Knows My Plan", © 1994 TMBG Music

So, what is all this? What exactly am I trying to accomplish in my corner of the web?

Well, the answer isn't exactly clear to me yet, as I've just started getting into this business of writing for mass consumption. But it's clear to me already that without some sort of 'elevator statement' (a useful term I first heard from Tonya Engst in TidBITS), it won't be clear to anyone why they should visit my site (no one knows my plan!) and it won't be clear to me what I'm trying to accomplish and how I should focus my energy. So, here goes:

What's where, and why?

On my home page, I plan to provide links to interesting stories or columns that I encounter, complete with any observations I feel like making. Usually these will be about computing issues, but that may change.

Every so often, I will write a short essay and post it for comment; these will live in the Steve's Scribbles section. (Sometimes they tend to get rather long, though; beware!) They'll usually be about the computing world, but I reserve the right to change my mind about that.

I am NOT interested in rating other people's sites (there will be no "Steve's Site of the Week!"). If you care what sites I like, just go to my ridiculously packed links page. Those are the sites I like and use, and that page is the one I always have my browser load first.

I am also not interested in becoming a daily Mac News site; there are plenty of good ones out there already (say, MacInTouch) and I don't have the time and energy and industry connections for that. Rather, I will spend my time synthesizing all the information I gather into a (hopefully) coherent snapshot of what's worth a look at any given time.

Who am I writing for?

I consider my audience to be people interested in how the Web works and in the state of personal computing. I spend a great deal of my time in both the MacOS and Windows worlds, so I do my best to keep up with developments in both. I prefer to use MacOS-based computers to produce my work, but I do not consider the Windows platform to be worthless or evil -- it's just not well-suited to my work. It's likely that my content will mostly be targeted at the MacOS audience, just because that's where my heart is.

I don't plan to update my site every single day, but lately it seems like I've been doing that; we'll see if I'm able to keep it up. I do plan to update it at least once or twice a week.

I do not put ads on my pages. In the first place, I'm not at this to make money, I'm in it to express my opinions. In the second, it's against University policy to make money off of the University's resources. Third, I want to make it clear that I have no hidden agenda for personal profit from anything I might say. (Though if someone likes my work enough to want to hire me as a columnist for a magazine, I'll think about it... :)

Summary

Ideally, I'd like my site to be thought of as a useful filter for the vast amount of news and information on the Web. Picking out the one or two stories that I think deserve attention on any given day and highlighting them may be a valuable function for me to perform, or it may just be an exercise in whistling in the dark. We'll see as time passes. I may just end up writing Scribbles now and then and posting them instead of trying to keep up with the steady stream of news that comes my way.

If you do find this site useful, by all means let me know by e-mailing me at bogart@wuolin.wustl.etc. And if you have suggestions for things I could do to make this site more useful to you, let me know that too.

Finally, I plan to update this 'elevator statement' at least once a year as my perception of my goal changes. I expect that my goals will be refined and clarified a great deal in the coming year.