I've been asked if I want follow up my VS2012 book with a VS2013 one. Thinking of writing the content as blog posts/video instead. Thoughts?
— Richard Banks (@rbanks54) June 10, 2013
I wrote the first book, in part, to better understand the publishing process and the rigor involved and from that perspective it was wonderful and I learned a lot. On the downside, writing the book meant I put the Talking Shop Down Under podcast on hold to make the time for it, probably permanently, and that was something I really enjoyed doing and was helping people learn.
Now I’m wondering if I should do something else to get content out there. Obviously I could do audio content, but does that really work for people, especially if it’s technical? Do I do longer content or short “did you know?” bite sized things? Do I put written content out there for reference? Do I do standalone video? Or maybe text content backed by video? Or try something else entirely? My mind is far from made up, I just know I want to do something that people enjoy and get value from, and that gets the widest reach.
If you wanted to learn something about visual studio, how would you find it? Book store/Amazon? Search engines? Somewhere else? And once you found it, how would you like it presented to you?
Leave your thoughts as comments on this blog post, or ping me directly via twitter. I’m @rbanks54. Thanks!
I have a fair few books which I always forget to read or refer to - I'm a fan of learning in bites so mostly on blogs. That could be because I have a short att...
ReplyDeletebut I'd like to think it is because, on a blog, the work can be consumable moments after it is generated, evolve through edits and comments, and age gracefully. Books like to pretend they are current but we all know the publication process is one of planned obsolescence which starts before it hits the presses. Books are old and immutable compared to the living thoughts that the Internet has given us all easy access to.
Video tutorials are another great way to show stuff as you would to somebody you were talking directly to.
@CadBloke Thanks for the feedback!
ReplyDeleteI think most of the time it is the internet from where people seek help and find technical problems and its solutions since the user base and the content accessibility is for a very large user base.
ReplyDeleteWhen it come to books i would agree with bloke that content of technical book will be be out dated with respect to time.
Didn't know you had a podcast going, sorry to hear it's been terminated.
ReplyDeleteBeen really getting into DotNetRocks and HerdingCode recently. An aussie podcast would be awesome though. Especially if you can interview local industry subject matter experts, and give a heads up for local events/conferences coming up.
Blogs are fine too, and so are books. They all serve different purposes really. As for video courses, I have been using Pluralsight for a number of years now. I find it invaluable. Maybe you should author a Pluralsight video?
An excellent question, Richard. There are answers from two points of view, I think: the technical consumer, and the manager/event planner. Most of us developers find info online. Much of what we do goes out of date in books, so up-to-date blogs can also be more reliable. Only if a book is really great and popular do developers buy and use it, I think, unless...they hear you talk about it in some other venue. Which brings me to the second point of view: managers, decision-makers, and event planners who book speakers like to see a book. It's a credibility thing, even if they never read it they remember, Richard Banks wrote that book.
ReplyDelete@Dan Nice perspective on it. Thanks
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