DominoPower: How about your diet plans?

Carl: I have to say, using my blog as a diet tracker has been an interesting experience also, with people sending me emails and giving me grief if I don't post the results for a week, so I suppose it did what I wanted it to do.

DominoPower: Any downsides to blogging?

Carl: Yes, you never know who's reading it, sometimes your opinion can disagree with theirs and they can leave the blog being very upset with you. Another downside can be that you meet complete strangers that start chatting to you as if they've known you all your life, and it turns out they just read your blog.

DominoPower: Is it hard to separate work and personal topics?

Carl: It can be difficult at times to separate my personal opinions from what the company has. Also, no matter what people think, you can't always say exactly what you want to say. If I have a bad day dealing with a customer, I can't really blog about it, as it turns out most of our customers read my blog.

DominoPower: So what does the future hold for Domino blogging?

Carl: My personal belief is that blogs are like CB radio in the 70s, really popular right now, but it will die down, much as people's personal web pages did in the late 90s. Some will continue, but we can already see a number of blogs that are going unedited and not being updated. For me I can't stop my blog now, my parents would kill me!

Interview with Rocky Oliver
The last person I talked to was Rocky Oliver, founder of Sapphire Oak Technologies and author of the Lotus Notes & Domino 6 Programming Bible available at Amazon.com (at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764526111/). You can read his blog at http://www.lotusgeek.com.

DominoPower: So, how did you get started blogging in Domino?

Rocky: I started my blog for a couple of reasons. Initially, it was to begin to understand the standards, design, etc. of blogging. What was an RSS feed? How do you format a blog? Those kinds of questions. I checked out a couple of blog templates out there, and decided to go with Blogsphere. Since then I have actually become one of the 'chefs' on the Blogsphere project, and have contributed a decent amount of code to the project.

DominoPower: And the second reason?

Rocky: To increase my exposure, and provide me a conduit for sharing things with the community. I had already established myself through my writing and speaking, but I wanted to have a place that was more timely to share technical tips, opinions, etc. with the community at large. I thought that if I did this right, it would increase my awareness in the community, or at least supplement my other marketing efforts.

DominoPower: How successful has it been?

Rocky: [The blog] has been a tremendous success. I average between 350-400 page views/day (not counting RSS feeds), and I have many people who tell me that they read my blog regularly. I have even gotten business solely from my blog -- my largest client to date. So, that one success story alone has validated this blog and is a strong inspiration to continue it. I also enjoy blogging personally. I have always been a knowledge sharer, and strongly believe that if I share what I know freely I will get tenfold that in return. This blog allows me to extend this sharing to a much larger audience. And the rewards I get from the community are well worth it.