The 100th Blog Spectacular

Aloha, and welcome to psilva’s 100th Blog Spectacular Extravaganza!  Well, maybe not that fantastic but I’ll hype it nonetheless.  [In my best Troy McClure voice]:  Hi, I’m Peter Silva, you might remember me from such multimedia content as, ‘In 5 Minutes or Less’ Videos or ‘The Audio White Paper’ Series.  We welcome those who also read this blog on WordPress, Blogger/Blogspot, Posterous and Ulitzer.  The 100th blog post is sort of a misnomer since I’ve also peppered my entries with things like video, audio and other delivery methods, but this is officially my 100th entry on DevCentral, my main distribution point.  Most of my other blog sites show more than 100 posts but we’ll get to that in a moment. 
It all started November 2007 with my First Post’s opening of,

‘I’m sitting here with the cursor blinking in an empty text field wondering what I'll write in my first DevCentral post.  I thought about the usual, 'Webster's defines blog as.......' or 'Hi I'm psilva, let me tell you a little about myself.'  BORING.  Rather, I'd like to start with something I call psilva's prophecies.’ 

and off I went.  It actually started a couple months earlier when a VP told me, ‘I want you blogging about stuff.’  Um, OK.  I like writing and was excited about sharing some of my thoughts pertaining to Security, Information Technology, F5, the market and any other musings or rants.  But how to get started?  What do I say?  Will anyone read it or even care?  It took me a few weeks to take the time and post something – and that First Post was short.  But at least I did it.  Initially, I would only write every so often when I got an urge and really didn’t have much of a following.  By the 23rd blog, I came up with an idea for a series based on Joe Pruitt’s ABC's and a presentation I gave concerning IT Security.  That array called 26 Short Topics about Security: Stats, Stories and Suggestions finally got me in a mode where I felt compelled to write (often) about the security risks and threats that challenge IT.  That series is also when I finally started to gain readership and began to syndicate to other outlets – which also brought more readers.  Currently, I’m in the middle of the CloudFucius Series covering whatever I find that’s Cloud related.  Other than the First and the 26 Short post, my all-time Top 5 reads are:

• Remember when we drew big Clouds on whiteboards…
• The Threat Behind the Firewall
• Decade old Data Centers
• Be Our Guest
• The Encryption Dance and it’s 'A Cappella' version.

The other ‘social media/social engagement’ piece that I’m proud of is the Audio White Paper Series.  It’s an idea I had and something we experimented with back in March 2009.  ‘Books on Tape’ has always been popular and thought ‘White Papers on mp3’ might also work.  Plus, I couldn’t find any vendor that offered an audio version of their content.  After a few rehearsal readings, I would sit (or stand) in my home office and just read aloud the written paper.  To engage the audience, I do try to vocally create a story even if it is technical information and you can defiantly tell the difference between the early tracks and ones recorded recently.  I’ve gotten much better.   :-)  I figured that people might be interested in the content but didn’t want to/have the time to download, print and read but would download to a media player listen when they got the chance.  At first, people wondered if it would have any impact but after accumulating a nice playlist library and promoting it, they have been very well received. 

Our main White Paper page on F5.com lists all our white papers and if there is a little Audio icon next to the title, then it’s available via stream or mp3.  Close to 50 White papers have been recorded giving you a nice selection to choose from.  Initially they were only available from F5.com or DevCentral but over the last month or so, we’ve decided to syndicate those out to different locations, including iTunes – which is why the other blog platforms have more than 100 entries.  I’m also using a service called Podbean to host many of the audio files in an easy to use player:

Powered by Podbean.com

The Rock and Roll Over icon is one I’ve used for years plus I have it tattooed somewhere, if you get my drift.  The all-time Top 5 Audio White Papers are:

• Audio White Paper - Built To Scale
• Audio White Paper - Application Delivery Network Platform Management
• Audio White Paper - BIG-IP Live Install and Logical Volume Manager
• Audio White Paper - Application Ready Solution Templates
• Audio White Paper - Optimizing The Business Of IT

Finally, I’ve really enjoyed producing many of the videos posted within my blog.  We’ve grown F5’s YouTube Channel over the last couple years to now include almost 100 videos showcasing F5’s people, products and solutions.   One of my favorites was the Dan Kaminsky Interview we did during the RSA Conference.  The DNS Master is in great form as we discuss DNS infrastructure, DNS vulnerabilities including DNS Cache Poisoning and DNSSEC.  The all-time Top 5 (views & ratings) psilva produced videos according to you are:

• In 5 Minutes - BIG-IP ASM L7 DoS & Brute Force Protection
• In 5 Minutes or Less - BIG-IP v10 Application Ready Templates
• In 5 Minutes Video - Consolidate Access with BIG-IP Edge Gateway
• Oracle Data Guard sync over the WAN with F5 BIG-IP
• F5 Networks Tech Demo - The BIG-IP Edge Client Solution 

And there you have it – the 100th Blog compete.  It might not be a big deal to many of you who post daily and have thousands of blog entries but consider that Perseus reports that 66.0% of surveyed blogs had not been updated in two months, "representing 2.72 million blogs that have been either permanently or temporarily abandoned.”  I’m glad to have made it this far and look forward to my sesquicentennial entry.

ps

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