Ah, self-promotion: a perennial HN topic. What I've seen is that there is a rift between the typical hacker and self-promotion.
As with most things, it's about balance, which Sacha hits upon. Success means that you need to self-promote, but at the right times with the right stuff to back it up. I can't tell you how many times I've talked to hackers/developers who are so vehemently against self-promotion to the point of blindness, and then, in the same breath, complain that other people who are less talented are getting too much attention by self-promoting.
I come from the school of thought that you need to be ultra-prepared and totally understand something and perfect it before even thinking about self-promotion. And, I assume, a lot of other hackers have this same mentality.
But, I realized that sometimes, you just need to ship and talk about what you're doing. It'll make you feel better, and also propel you to ship even more stuff. And in this way, self-promotion isn't only to tell other people that you're doing stuff, but it's also to get feedback and improve yourself. One cannot make great work in 100% isolation.
What a lot of hackers fail to realize is that by making something work and communicating to other people about it, you're already in the top percentile of people. It's OK to talk about it! Heck, it's also OK to promote it on HN and all the other usual channels. People will appreciate you sharing it. And the haters? Well, they'll always be there, even if you wait to perfect it. :)
So, if your head is swirling with thoughts that you may be too self-promotional, you probably aren't. Just share it.
PS. Dustin Curtis should pursue a career in marketing. Curating a network of quality bloggers would be a great move for him. He knows how to promote, design, and curate very well.
"I come from the school of thought that you need to be ultra-prepared and totally understand something and perfect it before even thinking about self-promotion...But, I realized that sometimes, you just need to ship and talk about what you're doing."
I think this is completely spot on, and it took me a long time to realize it. Recently, I'd been wanting to set up continuous deployment at our shop but I didn't know exactly the right way to do it. I also didn't post larger blog posts often at the time. I finally decided I wanted to post about doing continuous deployment with jenkins and capistrano [1].
So I set about to make it work. It's not the most elegant solution, and there are at least 3 things that are suboptimal with my method that I wouldn't use for a mission critical production use case...but we're using it for our own internal apps and our website, and so we don't care that much about those suboptimal bits.
Writing a blog post about how we were doing it generated tons of traffic to our site, and it also provoked a couple of conversations whereby I figured out a couple of things to do to make my method perfect - and subsequently gives me a new blog post later to write :)
Anyway, just wanted to throw in an anecdote - definitely think too many people get buried under the weight of 'but i'm not perfect yet'
Actually fame followed by action is a fairly well trodden route. Jeff Atwood and 37Signals come to mind straight away.
And to some extent Paul Graham. Granted, he successfully sold a startup during the dotcom years, but it's only with YCombinator that his achievements matched his essays.
The good old luck coefficient argument - the amount of luck you have is the area under a graph where Y is "how many people know about it" and X is "what you do".
For some reason I can't find the specific blog talking about this right now, but it's a fairly straightforward logical concept.
I laughed a tiny bit when reading this comment because it highlights one of the points of the post.
If the blog you're referring to was written (or repeated) by one of the internet personalities mentioned here, we probably would have remembered who wrote it.
Agreed that both doing and telling are important. When done well, both can become an art-form. One thing I find myself struggling with all the time is switching between these two modes of thought. I find that the switching cost to go from 'doing' to 'telling' is even higher than flipping from 'doing A' to 'doing B'.
That's a really, really good point. Once I switch myself to "telling" mode, I find myself maniacally refreshing HN, replying to every tweet, obsessing over traffic stats and referrers, and doing countless other unproductive things.
I usually need a day or two before I feel comfortable ignoring the rest of the world while I switch back to "doing" mode.
I agree that both doing and telling are important, but I disagree they are equally important. In addition, I don't think that lack of self-promotion is such a widespread phenomenon that it warrants a blog post to raise awareness of the problem.
That's a clear case of survivor bias. The only people we hear about are the ones who self-promote, so we naturally assume that everybody self-promotes.
The truth is that there's a ton of people out there putting out great work without making a fuss about it, and thus not getting the recognition they deserve.
Whether we like it or not, the truth of the matter is that telling is just as important as doing.
I'm a little unsure whether you mean "doing and then telling", or "telling in lieu of doing". It's confusing because the context is Curtis sort of unveiling some sort of blogging platform.
If the latter, it is notable that telling drowns out doing. Telling is a very poor substitute for doing anything, and pundits like Curtis, Gruber, that Microsoft-loving guy who I can't remember, Jeff Atwood...these guys have as little significance -- for their telling -- as a sports commentator who insists that the Yankees are the best. That's great, speak to your community and all, but utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
The trick is in trying to pivot your success building, essentially, followers, into success doing, which Atwood did to great success, and Curtis is now trying (Gruber is still stuck trying to pitch t-shirts). Good for Dustin to make that change, however the very valid comment that many have, as quoted in the article, is "why should this get hype?". Why should we assume that Curtis has any insight or particular value building a blogging platform just because he got a tonne of links for a highly suspect defense of 3.5" smartphone screens.
John Gruber makes a quite decent living selling ads around his punditry--he doesn't need to sell t-shirts. His "telling" isn't about what he does, but what Apple does. So his "doing" is "telling." ;-)
He also invented what's turned into the latest quite successful ascii markup language (Markdown). That's pretty good doing, establishing a useful standard.
Why should we assume that Curtis has any insight or particular value building a blogging platform
I think Svbtle can be judged on its own merits. Did it have particular value for you or not? That's the key question.
My point was more that if you think Svbtle has value, it shouldn't be dismissed just on the grounds that Dustin Curtis is a pundit. Because being a good pundit has value as well in itself.
Of course, if you think Svbtle sucks, then no amount of hype will be able to change your mind, and that's the way it should be.
How is it a "shot" at Gruber? The author makes a valid observation that people do question what Gruber has done, and for valid reasons.
Opinions are a dime a dozen. Everyone has them. Being a famous blog commentator has little to do with profound wisdom or a particular insight, but usually speaks more to the raw ability to pander to an audience.
And for the record, I respect Gruber for Markdown. He gains zero respect for years of Apple punditry.
[+] [-] jamesjyu|14 years ago|reply
As with most things, it's about balance, which Sacha hits upon. Success means that you need to self-promote, but at the right times with the right stuff to back it up. I can't tell you how many times I've talked to hackers/developers who are so vehemently against self-promotion to the point of blindness, and then, in the same breath, complain that other people who are less talented are getting too much attention by self-promoting.
I come from the school of thought that you need to be ultra-prepared and totally understand something and perfect it before even thinking about self-promotion. And, I assume, a lot of other hackers have this same mentality.
But, I realized that sometimes, you just need to ship and talk about what you're doing. It'll make you feel better, and also propel you to ship even more stuff. And in this way, self-promotion isn't only to tell other people that you're doing stuff, but it's also to get feedback and improve yourself. One cannot make great work in 100% isolation.
What a lot of hackers fail to realize is that by making something work and communicating to other people about it, you're already in the top percentile of people. It's OK to talk about it! Heck, it's also OK to promote it on HN and all the other usual channels. People will appreciate you sharing it. And the haters? Well, they'll always be there, even if you wait to perfect it. :)
So, if your head is swirling with thoughts that you may be too self-promotional, you probably aren't. Just share it.
PS. Dustin Curtis should pursue a career in marketing. Curating a network of quality bloggers would be a great move for him. He knows how to promote, design, and curate very well.
[+] [-] knewter|14 years ago|reply
I think this is completely spot on, and it took me a long time to realize it. Recently, I'd been wanting to set up continuous deployment at our shop but I didn't know exactly the right way to do it. I also didn't post larger blog posts often at the time. I finally decided I wanted to post about doing continuous deployment with jenkins and capistrano [1].
So I set about to make it work. It's not the most elegant solution, and there are at least 3 things that are suboptimal with my method that I wouldn't use for a mission critical production use case...but we're using it for our own internal apps and our website, and so we don't care that much about those suboptimal bits.
Writing a blog post about how we were doing it generated tons of traffic to our site, and it also provoked a couple of conversations whereby I figured out a couple of things to do to make my method perfect - and subsequently gives me a new blog post later to write :)
Anyway, just wanted to throw in an anecdote - definitely think too many people get buried under the weight of 'but i'm not perfect yet'
[1] http://isotope11.com/blog/continuous-deployment-with-capistr...
[+] [-] benohear|14 years ago|reply
And to some extent Paul Graham. Granted, he successfully sold a startup during the dotcom years, but it's only with YCombinator that his achievements matched his essays.
[+] [-] huggyface|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Swizec|14 years ago|reply
For some reason I can't find the specific blog talking about this right now, but it's a fairly straightforward logical concept.
[+] [-] kgtm|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sgdesign|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jianshen|14 years ago|reply
If the blog you're referring to was written (or repeated) by one of the internet personalities mentioned here, we probably would have remembered who wrote it.
[+] [-] sgdesign|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] c1sc0|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sgdesign|14 years ago|reply
I usually need a day or two before I feel comfortable ignoring the rest of the world while I switch back to "doing" mode.
[+] [-] olalonde|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sgdesign|14 years ago|reply
The truth is that there's a ton of people out there putting out great work without making a fuss about it, and thus not getting the recognition they deserve.
[+] [-] snitko|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sgdesign|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tablet|14 years ago|reply
Write > read
Think > speak
Left side matters more
[+] [-] huggyface|14 years ago|reply
I'm a little unsure whether you mean "doing and then telling", or "telling in lieu of doing". It's confusing because the context is Curtis sort of unveiling some sort of blogging platform.
If the latter, it is notable that telling drowns out doing. Telling is a very poor substitute for doing anything, and pundits like Curtis, Gruber, that Microsoft-loving guy who I can't remember, Jeff Atwood...these guys have as little significance -- for their telling -- as a sports commentator who insists that the Yankees are the best. That's great, speak to your community and all, but utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
The trick is in trying to pivot your success building, essentially, followers, into success doing, which Atwood did to great success, and Curtis is now trying (Gruber is still stuck trying to pitch t-shirts). Good for Dustin to make that change, however the very valid comment that many have, as quoted in the article, is "why should this get hype?". Why should we assume that Curtis has any insight or particular value building a blogging platform just because he got a tonne of links for a highly suspect defense of 3.5" smartphone screens.
[+] [-] cpr|14 years ago|reply
He also invented what's turned into the latest quite successful ascii markup language (Markdown). That's pretty good doing, establishing a useful standard.
[+] [-] sgdesign|14 years ago|reply
I think Svbtle can be judged on its own merits. Did it have particular value for you or not? That's the key question.
My point was more that if you think Svbtle has value, it shouldn't be dismissed just on the grounds that Dustin Curtis is a pundit. Because being a good pundit has value as well in itself.
Of course, if you think Svbtle sucks, then no amount of hype will be able to change your mind, and that's the way it should be.
[+] [-] losethos|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] funkah|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huggyface|14 years ago|reply
Opinions are a dime a dozen. Everyone has them. Being a famous blog commentator has little to do with profound wisdom or a particular insight, but usually speaks more to the raw ability to pander to an audience.
And for the record, I respect Gruber for Markdown. He gains zero respect for years of Apple punditry.