Do you participate?

Before I started my blog, I asked some folks for advice on what makes a good blog. Mike Potter told me that he recommended having catchy post titles. And clearly, John Nack, Photoshop product manager, and if you ask me, blogger extraordinaire, has mastered this art. So I was going to call this post "Why even bother?" but figured that might just come off as a bit negative.

Anyway, today's question is this -- do you participate in online activity, or just consume information? If you post comments, rate content, tag items, provide feedback, answer questions on lists and forums, why do you do it? Now I also realize that the consumers of info, those who don't immediately participate, may not be immediately inclined to provide feedback, so I'm anticipating that my comments will include lots of participants, but not a lot of folks that prefer to only consume info.

So if you don't normally participate in the conversation, well here's your chance to break out -- why don't you more actively participate in shaping great content, helping other developers, etc? What would it take you stop doing what you are doing, and jot off a quick note, suggestion, some feedback, or even click on some stars to rate content?

And since we're at it, is this whole community participation thing just a passing fad, or is it here to stay? I'd argue that forums and mail lists have been around for years, and we're just experiencing a natural evolution...But like my first post a few days back, this isn't really about what I think, its what you think. So please, comment away....

Am I too late to get feedback?

So I'm late to the game. Its taken me a long time to spin up my blog, but with a bit of a new focus in my job, I realized its time. So here it is...my entry into the blogosphere.

But if you have found your way here and don't already know me, then you are probably asking yourself, in the immortal words of Admiral James Stockdale, who am I and why am I here? So I'll explain that, and I'm definitely hoping for better results than the Admiral's.

I've been working at iterations of Adobe since early 2000, starting with Allaire, then on to Macromedia, and since December of 2005, at Adobe. Before that I spent time at Powersoft, Sybase, Silverstream and IBM. So I've been thinking about and working with developers a lot over the past 15 years, and specifically working on developer relations over the past 15 months or so.

And in the last month or so, I've started to focus even more deeply on developers, specifically around the area of developer programs. So it clearly became time to blog, not only to share some insight into things we are thinking about, things we are working to better support developers, but to use this blog as a way to get your opinions, feedback and ideas.

So with that, yes I'm late to the game, but I'm here. And while I'm thrilled to have comments welcoming me to the blogosphere if anyone wants to do that, more than anything I want to kick this off by getting input from people that develop applications with Adobe technology. What do you think --what does Adobe need to do to provide better support for developers? Is it better content, more community connections, easier ability to find code, etc? All ideas and suggestions are welcome.