Be More Serious about Blogging and Building a Community

To The Readers:

I am sorry I have been away for so long! I suck at blogging. When I look at my last post, it was dated December 2015, which means I have not written a blog for almost 6 months. Why? I think the following reasons applies:

1. Life Events. The past 6 months has been more eventful than usual for life outside of my 9-5. I quit my job at Microsoft and started working for A10 Networks again. Let's face it, anybody who have switched jobs know that you agonize about the move weeks / months before it actually happens, not to mention all the phone screens and interview loops. I also bought a house that required some renovation before moving in, then of course, have to move out of the old home and into the new. Moving is no fun and sucks the energy out of ya, I tell you.

2. Professional Direction. I have been making my living as network engineering before switching my focus to software development, particularly Python. However, I never wanted to just code all day. So I was trying to find a balance between writing code, building stuff, and relate them back to network engineering. I wrote my first online class for Internetwork Expert (https://streaming.ine.com/c/practical-python-for-network-engineers) and spent 10 weeks being a teaching assistant at University of Washington Extension Python 200 night course. They were each rewarding in their own rights, but they demanded my time and attention.

All in all, I am happy with the progress I have made this year, especially the teaching experiences, but there is one thing I regret the most: Not keeping up with my blog! This is highly unfortunate because although I started this blog as a place to do a brain dump of my code and projects, over time it proves to be one of the most valuable piece of work I have done. I can often point to this blog as a repository of projects and spur new conversations. Sometimes I look back at the post and find new inspirations. Reading thru comments that people leave allows me to build a closer relationship with people who spent their precious time reading things I have written. The list goes on and on.

So here I am, 6 months after my last post, writing a post to pledge my renewed enthusiasm for blogging. My goal is to share my knowledge that people find useful and build a community around the topic of network automation.

My renewed goals for my blog are:

1. Provide valuable information to people who wants to read about network automation, Python, and network engineering.

2. In time, earn their trust so they are open about what they want to learn and which topic they will find value in and pay for.

3. I will be able to focus on the topics that bring the most value to the audience with free and paid material.

I want to be completely honest that one of my goals is to construct paid course material that will help me sustain my effort, but not before I make sure the contents are worth every penny that someone paid for them. Also I will make sure I bring value to the world by putting free and valuable knowledge that can serve others.

So enough chatting, let's go for some Python for Network Engineer contents!

Sincerely,

Eric