• Ryan Elkins
• Jun 24,2008
• In: Featured, News

Welcome to Neude

Welcome to the new neude. For those of you who were with me during the old neude, you may be wondering what has changed. Well, the entire focus is now different. Before I wrote primarily about Neumont University - what was going on, what I liked, what I disliked, etc. I’ve been out of school for almost a year so it’s time to shake things up a bit.

The new focus is going to be on the IT industry in general. You’ll see articles about code, design, the workplace, management (both things to know and horror stories) and other topics that would be of interest to the professional developer. There is, however, one problem with this.

It can be a bit difficult to write about work on a public blog. People know who you are so even when you say “my company” it isn’t too hard to figure out which company that is. You tend to have to be very careful. On top of that, some companies simply don’t like their employees discussing what they are working on. The idea being that if a competitor reads about your work they will have a competitive advantage.

To combat these two issues you will see posts from time to time written by “Anonymous”. There will be multiple writers on this blog - some of whom may choose to write occasionally under a better known moniker, others that may wish to only write anonymously. It’s not that we are trying to hide anything (well, it sort of is) - we just want to be able to express ourselves fully without having to worry about the consequences of being able to identify individuals or the companies they may be referring to. The goal isn’t to bag on anyone - it’s to honestly talk about what it’s like in this industry and in order to do that a level of anonymity is necessary.

Now, it’s important to note that this doesn’t mean this is going to be a forum to safely attack other companies or people. Posts will undergo editorial review and nothing should come out that directly attacks anyone. It’s OK to say “This company has these problems:”, but not to say “Initech has these problems:”.

So far I have a small group of people, mostly all fellow Neumont grads that are working in a variety of different companies and places that have either agreed to write from time to time or to at least consider the idea. If you’d like to contribute at some point, just send me an article or two and we’ll go from there.

I’m still trying to decide what features to add and which to keep. Right now gravatars are active. If you haven’t set one up you can do so at en.gravatar.com. I have installed the Comment Karma plugin that was in use at the old neude site but I haven’t activated it yet. It will require some work to get it back up to snuff as we were using a moderately modified version. Other than that if there are any features you’d like to see added or removed, let me know and I’ll think about it.

For now, if you have any additional ideas or questions about the format of this blog, ask away. The last incarnation was… quite a journey. I look forward to seeing where this one will take us.

Also, anyone have any good ideas for a tag line? I had originally thought of something along the lines of “Where developers get wild and bare it all” or “Developers exposing themselves, but without the ickiness”. Suggestions?

The original site can still be found at http://www.neude.net/db.