Talking with Paul Bausch about ORBlogs

Paul is one of those people who you talk to and just feel thoughtfulness flowing off of him.

I learned a lot of important lessons during my talk with Paul Bausch about ORBlogs. I wanted to get a feeling for how he felt about the current excitement, and about the possibilities for the future. Most of all I wanted to make sure that the excitement wasn’t getting out of hand to him, and if he wanted to be involved in anyway.

I don’t know what I really expected from our talk, but I got a whole lot more regardless.  Paul is one of those people who you talk to and just feel thoughtfulness flowing off of him. It’s in the very cadence of his speech. The thoughtful pauses that proceed each slow, measured reply tell you one thing: You got a lot to learn from this man. Pay attention.

Lesson #0: I may not be cut out to help ORBlogs

First thing’s first. Admitting you have a problem is the first step in beating it, so I guess I’ll come right out and say it: I talked with Paul about 24 hours ago!

I know, I know! You’re thinking:

“24 hours!? My god man, Twitter could have gone down, like,  16 times in 24 hours! What the hell were you doing in all that time?”

It’s crazy. You’ll never believe it. You see, unlike a Real Blogger, I made the selfish choice to go to sleep when my eyes were closing of their own free will. Again, I know what you’re thinking:

“Wait a minute, let me get this straight, you’re saying that you didn’t blog because you were tired? WTF? I mean, a power failure I could forgive, but fatigue? Geez man, what the hell do they make coffee for anyway?!”

I do realize that this raises serious concerns about my ability to help with ORBlogs. Look, all I can say is that I’ll try not to let it happen again. We all make mistakes, and I’m sorry. I’ll go to counselling, I’ll take the baby steps. I’ll do the hard work!

I hope we can work through this.

Lesson #1: Paul Truely Loves ORBlogs

Paul didn’t kill ORBlogs because he didn’t like it anymore, or even because he was ambililent to it. Paul stepped out because he loved it.

First thing I should mention is that he seemed really touched at the outpouring of emotion and excitement at the prospect of helping. He had a lot of note of encouragement and the fact that we, the blogging community, were contacting him means a lot. He told me that he’d do what he can to help us, because he still believes in the idea, but when I ask him whether he would want to stay involved, or help lead ORBlogs2.0, he declined. For the best reason ever.

I think it would be better for someone with fresh and new ideas to take it over.

You know someone loves something when they built it from the ground up, know it inside out, have lived eaten and breathed it for 5 years, and still want to turn it over because they think someone else might be better able to run it. Paul’s reason for not wanting to be involved is that he was burnt out and a bit cynical about the site and so he “thought it would be better for someone with fresh and new ideas to take it over.”

So, Paul is officially out, but it’s not because he wants the site to die out or fade. He is out because, by his own account, ORBlogs was fading out. The user stats were dwindling, the commitment was waning. People would soon be going to a site that was more frustrating than functional. To put it bluntly, Paul felt it best to put the horse out of it’s misery quickly than to let it writhe. It seems as though it was a long and very difficult choice, but one he had to make, and one that should be celebrated both for its wisdom and it’s strength.

Lesson #2: Not All Code Is Poetry

The second important thing that came out of our talk is that we are on our own with code. That, he convinced me right off, is a good thing.

Listening to his description of the codebase made me suddenly have vivid visions of eyeballs and needles

I know that some of you will be thinking “Come on, you can give us something!” But I have to agree with Paul on this on. Maybe he was just saying it this way so I’d stop nagging him, but listening to Paul’s description of the codebase made me suddenly have vivid visions of eyeballs and needles.

So be it, he doesn’t want that to go out to the world. From his description, I can’t say I blame him. I like my eyes without the needles. We need to build the site from the ground up, Netscape style. Fine. No worries. We’ve got his database schema and momentum from the community. This is an opportunity, not an obstacle. More on the codebase issue to come in a later post.

So, there’s a description of the code, schema, et al. that we can use. Development server is on it’s way, but nothing’s stopping you from fiddling locally. Have at it.

Lesson #3: Commercial Blogs Suck

Okay, maybe that’s a little strong and not really so accurate either. After all, Positively Glorious! started as a commercial site- at least as a site that was mainly a development testbed for a wannabe commercial product that is, without hyperbole, the coolest thing anyone has ever seen, ever- regardless of the fact that those angel-types don’t want to give me gobs of money merely because I don’t have a shred of marketing data! As if numbers and facts can illustrate the awesome power of this fully operational Death Star!

Oh… Eh hem. Sorry, got a bit carried away there. Where was I? Oh, Commercial.

Strickly commercial blogs can likely suck our will to live, and walk away like happy little vampires.

You see the thing is. When you have a site that’s super cool and people go to, it becomes a marketing bananza. Paul was apparently getting slammed by pointless commercial websites who saw slick How-To videos by Troy McLure like “How to market your pointless commercial website,” and “ORBlogs! Get a sucker to do your work for free!”

Seriously, by his own words, he felt as though commercial sites were actually making money on his work. Wedding photographers, real estate agents, you name it. He made them easy to find, and they paid 0.0 red cents for the backend coding and individualized customer service. Cynical? Yeah, I’d be cynical. Heck, I already am, and I haven’t even done anything!

So, a lesson here is that strickly commercial blogs can likely suck our will to live, and walk away like happy little vampires without a Buffy in sight.

Lesson #pi: Look to Aggregation at Multiple Levels

One notable thing Paul brought up is that he was happy to see a Portland blog aggregator forming. In his original idea, Paul imagined aggregators at multiple levels. One for Oregon, then multiple ones at the city level, neighborhood level, etc. This is something to think about- especially when super sensitive people like me get all whiny and pouty about PDX bloggers being so numerous. We should consider the possibility of pdx.orblogs, etc.

Lesson #4: One-Ended Candles Are “A Good Thing”

Paul’s final piece of advice was probably the most important. To put it bluntly, don’t burn both ends of the candle. It was evident throughout the conversation that he was just dog tired of everything that had happened.

Make sure there’s more than one person working it, So they don’t get burnt out like I did.

There’s a lot of coding and a lot of management that we’re in for. That suggestion that we need to take seriously. Luckily, the community is already taking his advice. There’s already an @ORBlogs Twitter account manned by one person, regular community shout-outs and rallying by at Silicon Florist, a server coming online sponsored by Louis & Clark, an email listserv complete with an RSS feed, and a development site on Google Groups. The community is out en masse, join us!

The Finale

There were a few other lessons learned. Non-standard formatting is a pain, aggragation across topics is a pain, etc. Most of these will come out as development proceeds. As for the domain name: Once again, in his measured cadence he grudgingly noted that the domain is very connected with him and his name right now, so there’d be problems both ways in giving it up. Once again, I agree with him.

Given that response, I felt pretty stupid about registering ORBlogs.org, and asked him if he wanted me to take it offline immediately, which is the least I could offer. He noted that there could be a problem of dilution with ORBlogs popping up everywhere. That said, he didn’t see a problem with orblogs.org being the home of the new site. I told him that if he discovered it was a problem, let me know and we’ll take it down and work around it.

Paul has done something amazing. He deserves our thanks and appreciation. It’s our turn, now, to get moving.

ORBlogs is dead! Long-live ORBlogs!

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