Blogger Stories: Bob Walsh

Bob Walsh is a journalist-turned-programmer-turned blogger. His blog that caught the attention of Apress and started Bob on a new career .. and turned him into an author of a popular technology book.

Blogger Story Teller: Bob Walsh, ToDoOrElse; MyMicroISV

Back in October 2004 I started blogging as way to keep in touch with my beta testers of a commercial app I was writing to break free of being a corporate contract programmer.

At first, my posts were about my product, but a funny thing started to happen: I could not help but post about the underlying Big Problem that inspired me to slave away trying to write this application: getting things things done in a world that day by day seem to spin faster and faster, with ever more to do.

I started getting comments and trackbacks as I wrote more about ways of Getting Things Done, and then caught a lucky break: my posts convinced the editors at Apress in March 2005 to take a chance on doing a different kind of book for them, basically a business book for programmers who wanted to start their own self-funded startups, but were struggling with all the non-code business/branding/web site stuff.

The book (Micro-ISV: From Vison to Reality) came out in January to very strong positive reviews and sales, in large part to sharing at my blog many of the interviews I did for the book.

Now I’ve expanded to a second blog, MyMicroISV.com where I focus on what it takes to go from programmer to running your own micro online business, am working on a second book for Apress on blogging and building my micro-business through ToDoOrElse.com nearly exclusively.

What’s amazed me is how many people I’ve met through blogging, and how many people have been willing to help and offer advice and point me towards great sources of information. Being a contract programmer can be a lonely lot: you move from project to project, company to company, but you don’t build a community within the organization. Suddenly, I’m part of a community.

Technorati Tags: Business_Blog, Blogger_Stories, Bob_Walsh, MyMicroISV, ToDoOrElse, Technology