Why Blog: I contribute to one that gets 1000 hits/week and it deals with a small branch of process engineering with far fewer professionals than electronics.
- It's updated 3 times/week on average.
- Content is rarely profound. It's a little like the casual conversation we engage in at meetings.
- Occasional typos or missing commas are ok. This is a casual medium.
- Opinions (politely phrased) that add color are ok.
- A blog can be addictive - especially if it deals with something that is a big part of your life. It relieves boredom (How often do you check your email when you're at your desk?).
- Where will content come from: LICN members. If each of us contributes 4 times per year we will have 3 new entries per week.
- How long should entries be: Anything from one paragraph to a short essay like Carl's Oil to gas conversion story.
- What should topics be: Anything in good taste that will be interesting to other engineering professionals.
- Meeting notices
- Reviews of software tools and instruments
- Tips on circuit or software design
- Professional war stories
- Advice on running a consulting practice
How to get started:
All our members will receive an email invitation to participate. In that email there will be a link to the TypePad site where you can register for free. This will enable you to make posts. Your posts will go into an online queue. The blog gatekeeper (me for now) will move the posts from the queue one at a time at a rate of 3 to 4 per week.
- You can compose your post directly in TypePad or cut and paste from another editor. However, if you use something like MSWord it is very important to save the post as a .txt file and then reopen it with a dumb editor like NotePad before doing the cut and paste. TypePad won't know what to do with the special formatting characters that a full-featured word processor puts into a document.
- If your post is more than a few paragraphs, use the page break feature in TypePad so you don't push other posts right off of the front page. You'll see the icon for it in the TypePad control panel. That's what I did with Carl's.
- If you want a hyperlink in the post, use TypePad's hyperlink insertion tool to do it. Otherwise it won't be active.
- Note that TypePad lets you select a category. Use it to classify your post. It is a drop-down menu and I will eventually put in all the skills.
- You can insert images - gif or jpg. That has to be done with the TypePad tool.
- You can preview your post.
- DO NOT ALTER THE POSTING STATUS. THE DEFAULT SETTING IS "DRAFT". WE NEED TO KEEP IT SET TO "DRAFT" SO THE EDITOR CAN CHOOSE THE TIMING OF THE POSTS.
Comments