Reformulating your Vitamin J

On March 14, 2008 in Announcements, Blog Improvements, Community building

I’m excited about some new possibilities for DailyJ.

Likely every project reaches a point, as it grows, where it needs to be re-evaluated and a decision has to be made. The options usually are quit, stagnate, work to death, or change.

I’ve never been one to quit (yes, I’m very stubborn). I understand (somewhat) that knowing when to quit can be a good thing. Unfortunately I don’t know when to quit, if I did I would probably be quitting now. But as it is I think there will be plenty time for quitting when I’m dead.

So that leaves the other three and only one of those is acceptable. It’s time for some changes (with any luck they will be good ones).

Work load and etiquette

The delays in posting interviews and replies to comments have really been bothering me. I don’t want to neglect any of you.

So I am thinking of ways to better handle the interviews. Up to this point I have been contacting more than one website at a time for interviews (and offering interviews to bloggers I happen to meet).

That worked well for awhile (especially at the launch) but now it is just too much. The result is delays and I am tired of being disrespectful to upcoming interviewees by taking too long to send them interview questions or failing to post their interviews quickly.

More brainstorming out loud -

Privately I brainstorm different ideas about DailyJ and other projects. Going forward though I want to open up that process by posting any ideas I have and getting more feedback about them.

Focus -

At first glance a website about Japan-related websites might seem a little silly but I think focus is the key to building a great site so I want to stay focused. So interviews are still the key ingredient of the vitamin J mix. But I’d like to have some multi-participant discussions with the people behind different web projects (a sort of “team interview”).

More discussion -

There is a lot happening around the Japan-related web and it seems to me all of that action demands more discussion and maybe even a little debate. Regular discussions about happenings and topics on the J-web might be a good permanent feature on DailyJ. Anyone could suggest a topic for debate and would become a post/discussion. Or maybe I should start a forum (?), a Japan-blogger’s forum.

Also, as some bloggers have mentioned to me, often ideas are passed back and forth in email when it might be better to discuss them with a wider group of people. Three heads are better than one. I think this goes back to that Japan-blogger’s mailing list idea.

My thoughts on a Japan-related web community are that such a community could be modelled after the open-source software communities. That is what I would love to see. How that will come about I will have to leave to smarter minds (though I offer any support I can provide), but that it could come about excites me.

The communal wiki at http://jproject.wikia.com would probably fit somewhere in that mix. And it seems from feedback that “Japan Labs” should be the name for it. I really like the idea of a laboratory for all sorts of Japan-related web experiments! (That was the atmosphere I was going for all along)

Well, there you have it. I’ve given you lots of ideas to discuss, tear apart, etc.

Comments (13)