Category: Blogging

Why do I blog?

I have been blogging for quite some time now (infact I started writing in 2004) and tons of people have asked me this question. I think its about time I answered this one honestly. On a public forum.

So why do I blog?

  1. Blogging is thinking out loud. When I write/blog, I actually put pen to paper and I think before I dare make my thoughts public. And hence when I write, it helps me think. Helps in ideating.

  2. Blogging helps create an archive of thoughts. I have always made notes on notebooks of all shapes and sizes. A blog gives me a permanent place to archive them. I can now look at what I was thinking, what I was like way back in 2004 etc.

  3. Blogging helps me connect to more people. Since the web is permanent, anyone, anywhere in the world can read my blog (with a bit of luck obviously) and can give me feedback on what I am thinking. This is simply impossible in a real world. My immediate circle of friends can only be limited and there is no guarantee that they would be interested in what I am saying.

  4. Blogging Opens up minds. Before I was blogging, I was an arrogant and a mediocre person who lived in his own self created world. I thought I knew everything and I was above all. Moment I started writing, I realized that I need to learn a lot more and there are more people who can teach me things. I am still a self-claimed mediocre but no longer an arrogant one.

  5. Blogging is fun. As simple as that. 🙂

I am often asked why do I copy-paste my posts on plugdd.in, venturewoods.org, mutiny.in etc. Again the answer remains the same.

  1. Platforms like these give me a larger audience to express my thoughts to and more importantly get feedback from.

  2. Writing is about reaching out and meeting more people. Independently, I can never reach the kind of audience these platforms can give me (and have given me).

  3. Finally It is also about connecting to the people who share the same ethos and ideas. Wonderful things can happen when people talk. And blogging at these platform enables conversations.

In one line, blogging for me is that constant pursuit of learning and exploration. Why do YOU blog? Is it money? fame? connections? timepass? what?

500 and My Blogging Biography

This is my 500th post on this blog. Come to think of it, its been an interesting journey.

I am not a celebrity blogger as yet, and in all probability I would never be one but blogging has been a really important part of my life. I have made very good friends (Megha, Priyadarshini, Ravi, Sandesh, Sanjukta, Shankar), learned so many things, found an avenue to express my thoughts, made public my inner most thoughts, shared with the world things that I am really fond of and a lot of other frivolities.

I think it all started sometime in 2000 when I saw Aakash, a very good friend from MAC update his profile page on yahoo. I did not know that time that Yahoo has this page where you can write your profile. I still remember he was using the only computer with a pathetic dial up network in out computer lab.

I went to a friend’s place that very day and created a yahoo email account (I no longer use it – dont remember the password). And that was the beginning. After that I created my own yahoo profile, created a lot of websites for my self and for other people including my college fest, Lucky Ali and Simone Singh. I extensively used Geocities and other yahoo tools. No I knew had heard of blogging, social networking, even Google.com in those days.

Then all of a sudden Y2K happened. Along with it came a lot of new thoughts, opportunities and information. Online activity was limited to emails on yahoo mail, chats on yahoo chat rooms, games on yahoo games, websites on geocities, freeservers and buildtolearn. It’s funny how those days life revolved around yahoo and now its around Google. Wondering what would it be tomorrow.

And then somewhere in 2004, I stumbled onto blogging. Yet again because of Aakash. Started this blog and have been writing since. There are times when I post every 5 minutes and there are times when I dont write a single word for weeks. But somehow my interest in blogging never waned. I then thought one blog is not enough. And I started a blog for posting my pics, this, this and this for posting my thoughts on travel, one for stocks, one for my not-so-random thoughts, one for MDI, one for MML and a host of other ones that I dont even remember now.

Then sometime in 2005, I registered SaurabhGarg.com to move all my unofficial pages at one place. I had esaurabh.8m.com (unfortunately I have forgotten the password to this one too) and a lot of pages sprinkled on the Internet.

Then I had this itch to start contributing to more websites and getting a wider audience and discussions, I started looking for more avenues to write and express myself. Sanjukta introduced me to mutiny.in. I found what Ashish was doing at pluggdin and thoughts users at VentureWoods would be able to add a lot to my understanding of the businesses. And then I started writing for these people. It has helped me a lot already and will hopefully meet more interesting people.

And this brings me to a very interesting point now. What should I do with my blog. I have realized that blogging is one of the best initiatives that I have ever taken. And this is probably something that I have not left mid way. I tend to get bored too soon from things and there are times when I thought that I need to move away from blogging but somehow I was always back.

Now as I write this 500th post for this blog, I think I need to create a blogging policy. I need to update my blogs frequently to remain pertinent. I need to write sense. I need to think before I actually write things. Things like one post per week on mutiny.in, one post per week on pluggdin, one post per fortnight on VentureWoods, one post every two days here. Even if I dont have the ideas, I will have to think hard and come up with ideas. I need to bring a discipline in my blogging.

To end it, I can now be found on the Internet at my website, my blogs, and various other places including LinkedIn, Twitter, Tlickr, Friendfeed, Blogger, PBwiki, , Facebook, Orkut etc. Long term goal is to get listed on Wikipedia.

And hopefully reach more milestones with blogging. Signing off.

Future of Blogging figured out !

My last few posts have been about future of War of Words and Thoughts. On way to office, I think I have figured out a way.

Here is a simple solution.

War of Words will be my personal blog where I talk about things that are personal to me. Things like I hate watching movies, I love watching cartoons, I want to meet Steve Jobs etc. These would be the things that no one else is interested in. These things matter to me and hence I blog kinds.

Thoughts would talk about things that I think passionately about and where I believe I can contribute. I would talk about technology, marketing, media, India, entrepreneurship, people, ideas and a whole lot of things that I would think and compile. Basically things on Thoughts would be useful for everyone. It is meant to be read by people. People would be able to make some sense of these posts and thus will contribute to their learning. This will also give me a good platform to showoff my prowess of these matters (which is obviously debatable). In one line, as management professionals would put it, will add value to them.

Obviously, if I get another brilliant idea, might throw this one out in the dustbin and move on.

Surprisingly, other people also seem to have the same issue (d_grailed for example). Financial community might interpret this as slowing own of Internet Addiction and might downgrade their ratings of technology stocks 😀

Future of War of Words

Few Facts First

1. No one reads your personal blog if your last name is not Hilton or Spears.

2. Even though people dont read your personal blog, it still hangs in the air (stays on the Internet) for everyone to see and read.

3. It still reveals a lot of things about you. Lot of them desirable (that you think, that you are honest, that you like straight-forward, that you love adventure sports) and lot of them undesirable (that you are old, that you are a MBA, that you are getting balder with each passing day, that you are still single and that you dont want to get married) etc.

As I have said earlier that I am thinking what to do with this blog (here and here), I will try to pen down the arguments against and for the decision.

Reasons against shutting down

1. 4 years of effort (first post ever here)

2. Emotional attachment (even though no one else reads this, I write because I want to write and I like venting out whatever I think is relevant to me).

3. Very strong identity (Google for Saurabh Garg and this is amongst the first results).

Reasons for shutting down

1. 4 years of effort – with every passing day this 4 years is growing and would be more difficult to shut tomorrow.

2. Very strong identity – I started this when I was a student. Today I am looking at creating businesses. Every new contact I make in the real world would search for me on the Internet. And they see this blog – which is a good thing but does not talk about my work and other professional interest areas. One way to go about this is to brand this as a personal blog and move on (this is a good idea – I will do this right away).

So basically there is only one strong reason for me even thinking about shutting this blog. Point to ponder is that is it that big that I shut this down (wow three “that”s in six words – a new world record?). Will keep on adding points and thoughts to this. And come to think about it, this could be an interesting personal marketing and branding problem.

How about selling this on ebay? May be I get few interesting bids and money can motivate me to finally end this? Any offers from any generous people around?

Why?

I wrote this piece some time ago. Its about time I posted it.

In my opinion everything you do must have a “Why” answered before its done.

Why “The Infinite Monkeys”?

Because there are million things on your mind at any given point in time and there is no way that you an keep track of them on paper notebooks. Maximum you can scribble them. Chances are that you would misplace the notes and then they would be lost forever.

Logical question is that isn’t blogging tougher than scribbling .. ? Answer would be .. yes it is but it gives me an easy retrieval system. Better than text files and notebooks. Data is all about retrieval. Without retrieval, its plain old information. And information by itself has no real value.

TIM is an attempt to collect online, all thoughts and things that can be helpful. It could be a news clipping, an article, a link, an interview, a piece of thought, a doodle. Anything.

Why online?

Its easier to read later. Recollect thoughts.

Why blog?

Ideally I would want a system where I can post my current moods, locations etc. This would make it very easy to recall at a later date. Since I don’t have a system like that, anything that is close enough serves the purpose. And hence Blogger. I can post things with an email address and can write and edit at will. I can also put categories to the posts and all thoughts would be in context. I can make tag clouds. I can hunt for similar posts and get feedback and opinion from people.