In general, I’m not a fan of corporate blogs and twitter accounts; I find very few useful. We’ve steered clear of these for Cesium; however, Cesium is not a corporation, it is a project.
I’m toying with the idea of replacing the announcement mailing list (cesium-announce) with a blog. An announcement mailing list is kind of like an old-school blog for news. I suspect the blog would get more interest and followers than cesium-announce, and would be a bit more general than just new releases, including things like new Cesium-based apps (both by us and users), upcoming presentations and papers, and technical stuff. It will be written by developers with no marketing BS, other than talking about Cesium at all is marketing to some extent.
Given that there’s interest in updating cesium.agi.com, perhaps the blog would be a new tab and also accessible as a sub-domain.
I think a blog is a great idea, as long as we are committed to
updating it regularly, I would consider something like 2-4 significant
(non-announcement) posts a month a good goal. I think they'll be
overlap between blog posts and the wiki, so we would need to make sure
all information makes it back into relevant wiki pages.
Not to be too formal, but I think it's a good idea to focus on what
exactly the purpose of the blog would be; I could see a few different
types of posts
1. Announcements - normal Cesium related announcements regarding
presentations, releases, major changes etc..
2. WebGL slanted posts - articles concentrating on either some
complicated graphics problem we recently solved, or maybe some
bleeding edge work we're doing (such as the depth texturing stuff).
These posts can sometimes be brief with just a link to the wiki and
maybe a screenshot or live demo showcasing what we've done. They are
meant for graphics developers.
3. JavaScript slanted posts - similar to the above, but more
JavaScript or CS centric. Maybe someone ran into a hard to debug
problem, or we start using some third-party library and want to give
props. I'm sure Mr. Hunter could fill volumes regarding our dojo
build procedure or Jasmine usage. They are meant for JS developers.
4. Guest posts - discussing either some special graphics topic or
maybe just a Cesium user who would like to plug his project and talk
about his experience with Cesium. Target audience depends on the
topic.
5. Demo/feature posts - Posts whose main purpose is to highlight a new
feature or perhaps showcase some aspect of Cesium they think people
overlook. We could also trumpet new demos on the website and stuff.
These are meant for everyone and would hopefully get traction on other
aggregators.
Right on, these are all good topics. (2) and (3) are basically what I meant as “technical stuff.” In fact, I really mean (2) to be something interesting, but minor or informal enough that we didn’t publish it for real, e.g., in JCGT, which I expect to be to our venue of choice for significant graphics innovations. Having meat like this on the blog is an on-ramp for readers not necessarily interested in Cesium.
As for the frequency of posts, my personal blog (well, it’s Kevin’s too, but he needs to post more!), averaged two posts a month in 2010 and 2011, so 2-4 is a reasonable goal, but I won’t hold anyone to it.
Also, as for process, or social norms as I like to call them, it would be just like a pull request: someone writes a post, and someone else with enough knowledge - or guts - publishes it. I’m not sure how this works in WordPress or if there are plugins for github or whatever.
Other thoughts? In particular, any negatives other than it requiring time?
Kristian plans to roll out the new Cesium website in the coming weeks (hopefully this week), which will include the new blog. To get things started, I’m writing a short intro post and a separate longer post on our development practices (code reviews, tests, releases, etc.), which could be a great lead in piece for folks to write more detailed posts on each topic.
To show that we are serious about filling our blog with good technical content related to Cesium and the technologies it’s built on - not marketing hype - I want to encourage everyone to write a post early in the blog’s life on a topic of your choice. Matt and I discussed some ideas below.
When things are ready, Kristian can inform us how exactly to post. In the meantime, use google docs or an editor of your choice.