Changing my focus?

I leave for Oracle OpenWorld 2014 tomorrow, which is normally a time when I’m super amped up, but I feel rather flat and in need of change at the moment. I just feel like I’m investing a massive amount of my time on things I don’t enjoy and are not really benefiting me or the community at large, so what’s the point?

What do I enjoy?

• Playing with technology.
• Writing articles and blog posts about it.
• Meeting and talking to people about this stuff.

What don’t I enjoy?

• I don’t really enjoy answering questions on forums any more. For every one good interaction I have, there seems to be about 10 where people refuse to think for themselves and treat me as their own personal slave.
• I’m getting an increasing number of people asking me questions on Facebook and Google+ chat. Not only does this have a similar ratio of good:bad interactions, but there is nothing left behind that helps other people. There is no content produced that allows others to answer their own questions from a Google search. This feeds into the dependency cycle.
• Cleaning up the massive amounts of spam I get.
• Dealing with the endless stream of people wanting me to help advertise their product or website.

This is not a business for me. It’s fun. When it ceases to be fun, what’s the point?

At the moment, I feel like:

• Locking the forum.
• Locking the article comments.
• Blocking the comments on my blog.
• Deleting all emails that include technical questions, without even reading them.
• Ignoring requests for help on all social media.

This would allow me to spend a lot more time playing with Oracle and writing articles, which I feel benefits myself and others to a greater extent than what I’m doing now.

If I look at my web stats, they seem to back up my opinion. The vast majority of hits on my website are for content. Only a very small proportion relate to “interaction”, yet it is this interaction which takes up the vast majority of my time.

I guess some people would see this as going against the whole ethos of the ACE Program, but I don’t think so myself. I think I’m more use to the community by putting out content, rather than doing what I’m doing now.

Maybe I’ll come back from OOW and have a change of heart. Maybe not. Time will tell.

Cheers

Tim…

Update: Some people have taken this post as a message that I’m going to stop writing articles. I think the post is pretty clear on that front. This is about giving me more time to write articles.

Update 2: The forums are locked while I’m at OOW. I’ll decide if they will stay locked once I get back to the UK.

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Changing my focus? was first posted on September 23, 2014 at 12:32 pm.
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