New Year’s Resolutions I Would Make If I Made New Year’s Resolutions

I’m not really one to make New Year’s resolutions. I think if something is work resolving, you should do it without regard to the calendar. If a resolution is so weak as to be driven by an arbitrary date on the calendar, it’s not very strong resolution. I think also maybe people just restate resolutions they have already made at this time of year just to have something to say when asked about resolutions.

Resolution #1: Subscription Site

Regarding this blog, one of my resolutions is to start a paid subscription area for special topics. This will essentially replace my book writing activities. It will give me more direct control over topics, updates, publishing, prices, piracy, etc. The first area is in the works now, and will be a revisit to the old Tools/Options Guide I used to publish 10+ years ago. It will be a free area of the subscription site. Paid areas to follow will be Surfacing, Admin, Plastics, maybe even some of the SolidWorks Professional level apps, with each area taking a few months to develop. The idea will be that an annual subscription will be about the cost of a book, and you can buy a 5 year (lifetime) subscription, or a company can get a corporate subscription for all employees, each at a different dollar amount. This will prevent me from going the advertising route, which I’m increasingly uncomfortable with.

Resolution #2: Wider Range of Topics

Face it. CAD used to be cool, but it’s less cool now than it was a few years ago. People are more attracted to 3D print and wider simulation topics. I’m not sure a CAD-only blog can really attract enough attention to keep it going. Plus, the development of CAD is just not what it used to be (no, I don’t consider CAD-in-the-cloud to be a CAD development, it’s an IT application delivery development – steps toward converging subdivision modeling with NURBS CAD are what I consider CAD development).

SolidWorks is a good topic, but the technology is old, and the current generation of users is less interesting than the first couple generations. Plus, the program seems to be in maintenance, or money raking mode, not really doing much interesting in development. Other packages have become interesting to me, including Solid Edge, NX, and IronCAD. I’ve been increasingly open to new ideas, and I think that will only accelerate going forward.

I promise I won’t get distracted like I did 7 or 8 years ago when I started doing smart phone evaluations, but I may do other more CAD-related hardware tests.

Resolution #3: Continue to Just Say it Like I See It

I think it’s a mistake for me to try to write like other people, because, well, I’m not other people, and I’m not even really a writer. Maybe it’s a train wreck, maybe it’s philosophical misfire, maybe it’s a rant that only makes sense inside my own head. People have told me that yes, they read my stuff because of the technical information, but mostly it’s the damn-the-torpedoes opinions and to some extent just stating the obvious against public denials from people who know better.

The thing is that most professionals don’t express honest opinions, so when you get one who does, it’s like Salvador Dali in a room full of Jackson Pollacks. They are so used to prevaricating to fit the corporate mood that it’s kind of hard to believe this sort of thing is not more reviled in individualistic society. I’ve met many corporate CAD executives who seem to be otherwise extremely intelligent people, but will say with a straight face things that are obvious BS like “AI will never have any effect on design”, or “data on the cloud is more secure than [xxx]”. So stating the obvious becomes an almost revolutionary act.

Resolution #4: Focus Around the Topic

I won’t say that I don’t occasionally get distracted, or that I’m always 100% focused on whatever I’m talking about. I do from time to time weave a yarn in the name of allegory. But there are a couple of things I usually avoid: 1) personal stuff and 2) politics. I don’t get any thrill of publishing my own face. I’m not sure why that is, I just don’t. I don’t generally talk about my vacations, family, hobbies, although if you go back far enough, you might find a couple of fishing posts. I’ll keep focusing around the product development business process topic.

Resolution #5: Encouraging Interaction

No matter what else I do, I’m always trying to encourage interaction between readers. It makes the topic more interesting, and the feedback loop coming back from readers makes the whole discussion more relevant, and helps me focus in on topics and points of view that you find more interesting, and apply to your daily work.

Modern writing (which I define as writing for the web with a focus on marketing) has this tendency to be 80% about click-bait. They are just trying to get you to click that next link to an even more salacious story than the last one. It’s 80% SEO BS, and 20% real content. If I could find a way to include Kim Kardashian or Beto O’Rourke in the first sentence of my blog posts, and find a reason to repeat those names in the first paragraph, use pictures with their names as tags, my Google traffic would be astonishing.

I’m not sure where my chosen topic rates up against the Kardashians, but I’m pretty sure it’s not quite to toenail level. I’ll rely on trying to write interesting articles about interesting topics, and hosting interesting exchanges between readers in the comments. Sorry to be so old-school, but I just don’t buy into the whole Snake Emollient and Oil school of modern writing.