As the 100th article on this blog has been published (time really flies), I wanted to let you know a bit on how it works and what drives this blog. You probably didn’t ask for this but it may interesting anyway so you get your expectations right on this blog.
Thank you
First of all, a big thank you for the ones reading this post, but also to everyone that is reading any blog post that I have made.
As you can imagine, I am tracking the visitors on my website and I am very surprise that my topics are gathering so many people (~1000 users per month if you want to know).
I know that my topics are a very niche market for my blog but I am so pleased to see that it works and people are learning from my posts (or just reading them).
This (the fact that there are people visiting my blog) gave me the validation that I can help and I am not the only one interested in these topics, hence pushing me to continue.
How do I select my topics ?
I select the topics from my list of interests and even though it is already quite diverse, it could be more because I have a very large interest spectrum. From Analytics, of course, to Philosophy, going through Sports and Economics.
So anything of interest is a potential article. Obviously with a domain name “datanalyst”, I am much more driven into analytics and currently Adobe Experience Platform is the focus. Mostly because it is a new solution and people need guidance to fully understand it, and hopefully make a good use of it.
I also used that blog for sharing ideas and concepts that are not always related to data analytics or implementation but may drive ideas on that domain (Kant, the other things you need to know, online advertising in 2022, etc…) or just improve the mind. I believe that a good data analyst should have a holistic, not only technical but of the context.
So even if I am focusing on the data analysis part, there may be a reason for me to drop an article on sports or economics at some point.
How long does it take ?
Honestly, a lot more time than I anticipated. Writing constantly is quite demanding in term of investment. Thankfully, even if I am writing on my weekends (this is not my job for those who don’t know 😉 ), my company allows me to think of the posts during the week. Also I am able to prepare some of the python feature during my low time at work.
I would say that a normal blog post is about 5 hours of work at least.
For the series that I am doing about python modules that I developed, then it is a lot more. I have to write and test the module and then write the documentation on the blog.
For these series that were mostly done last year, it is about hundreds of hours for a 5 – 6 blog post series.
This is why I cannot only do that.
People may think that I do python at work but python development is not my job ! I am working with JS first for implementation (Hello Launch) and with other (Adobe) tools most of the time (AA / AAM).
So I am just a regular guy trying is best to do tools for a community (and learning at the same time). Therefore I am sorry if some times the modules are a bit unstable but overall I believe in the power of the community and on iteration of improvement.
What future topics for 2020 / 2021 ?
In the future, my plan was to do more python data analysis series because I didn’t do as much as I expected at the beginning. Now with Adobe Experience Platform, there is an opportunity to do that at work as well.
Of course, Adobe Experience Platform will also be one of the topic if I have the possibility to “play” around with it.
I am also an Adobe Audience Manager consultant and didn’t do much topics on that solution. Maybe it is something that people would like to hear about.
Lately, I receive approval to do video / live streaming demo of working with Adobe Solutions and python together. It is something that I would really like to do but this is extremely stressful (because live coding) and I am not sure if my audience will really benefit from it. I don’t mind doing it for 2 people only but when I will prepare this series, it will mean that I don’t do any other topics.
Also, I may consider using the blog for more personal thoughts, in a specific category. There is so much more in life than analytics and that could help at work (or in life). The way that Aaron Swartz published regularly on technical but also on personal topics makes me think that both are always connected but only few people are revealing the link.
And on your side, do you like this plan ? Do you have any topic that you would like me to cover ? More Analytics workspaces (I didn’t do a lot of that) ? Target (I am not a Target consultant but I could look into that as former Testing manager) ? JavaScript ?
Let me know in the comment.