Old Tin Roof

Having a voice and remembering to use it

This is the third incar­na­tion of oldtinroof.com in the past cou­ple of years, and although the focus has changed over that time, one thing has stayed cur­rent: I’ve not really used it as a plat­form to get my view across, it’s just been a sta­tic port­fo­lio of old work.

Over the years I’ve coached clients and worked with mar­ket­ing spe­cial­ists to help them improve their online pres­ence by show­ing their skills and help poten­tial clients under­stand them by writ­ing fresh con­tent as often as pos­si­ble.  Well, I think it’s about time I prac­ticed what I preach.

Excuses, excuses, excuses

Excuses are some­times rea­sons, so I guess I can put my lack of out­put to a num­ber of them:

• I’ve got plenty of expe­ri­ence but used to find it dif­fi­cult to artic­u­late my thoughts.
• I was wor­ried that I’d say some­thing that could be con­strued in the wrong way (and I’ve never enjoyed confrontation).
• There are so many voices out there online that I really respect that I didn’t think I had any­thing to add.
• Keep­ing a con­sis­tent level of con­tent com­ing is a ter­ri­fy­ing prospect!

Wow, look­ing at that list it sounds a lot like what I hear from other peo­ple about why they shouldn’t write online.

So, what’s changed?

Over the past few months I’ve spent a fair amount of time explain­ing my work, and my deci­sions to col­leagues and friends, and have found that I actu­ally have some strong opin­ions on sub­jects that I keep to myself.

I’ve also realised that the rea­sons (excuses) for not writ­ing were fairly rub­bish, and due to a num­ber of changes in my life over the past few years (a post or two about that later), I now have the tools to deal with these and any other fears.

Based on these changes, I’m unlikely to worry about stick­ing to a reg­u­lar post­ing sched­ule, but I’ll be try­ing to keep up a stream of thoughts about tech­nol­ogy, the web, design, music, film, and cre­ativ­ity — all the sub­jects I’ve found my voice for.