Well, this is it, my very first blog! For years I’ve been reading blogs, commenting on blogs, searching blogs. I finally decided to start my own. Once I decided that age old question “To blog or not to blog” that was just the beginning. There were so many other decisions…should I have just one blog and post everything I want to say there…should I have a professional blog and a personal blog…should I have blogs for different categories of things I want to write about, should I host the blog on my own web site(s), should I use WordPress, blogger, TypePad. So I started looking around at other blogs to figure out what I like and don’t like. Anyway…here’s what I came up with. I really don’t like blogs where one day the topic is very focused on something business or industry-related and the next day it’s about the trip the writer took with their family. If I read your blog for industry related content, I’m looking for something specific. I’d rather not sort through all of the other stuff. So, I decided that it would be best if I have multiple blogs:
Dan Blake’s Blog – http://danblake.wordpress.com/
This is the blog you are reading. This is my “personal” blog. It’s where I post my deeper thoughts, updates for friends and family, and anything that is not related to my core business blogs. That doesn’t mean I won’t post anything about my professional life here. Work is a big part of everyone’s life (although hopefully not the biggest part). But you won’t find me posting about some highly-technical, industry-specific topic on here. My friends, family, and non-technical colleagues don’t care about how to architect a data center to host multi-tenant CRM SaaS applications. Obviously, I chose to use WordPress for this one.
CourseMax Blog – http://community.coursemax.com/blogs/coursemax
This is my company blog. CourseMax is a business I started back in late 2005. CourseMax is a free online-community for anyone involved or interested in professional and continuing education (hopefully every adult on the planet). We also offer premium software (CourseMax CRM) for organizations that provide training that helps them run their business and service their customers. This blog is where I’ll write about the CourseMax community, tools, and industry-related topics. Hosting this one was a no-brainer…blogging is part of our software suite.
Dan Blake’s CRM Architect Blog – http://thecrmarchitect.wordpress.com
In addition to being the President of CourseMax, I am also the lead technical architect (that’s GOT to change one of these days!). I’ve been working with Microsoft(r) Dynamics CRM as a consultant for a long time…I think it’s over 6 years now. CourseMax is (at least in my own mind) a pretty bleeding-edge, early adopter of Microsoft CRM technology. That means we end up running into issues and idiosyncrasies that nobody (or at least few) has come across before. I’ m very grateful to Microsoft and the CRM Community for all of the help I’ve received over the years. So, when we learn something new or come up with a solution that I think will benefit the Microsoft CRM community, I’ll post it here.
So that’s it for my first blog posting (at least on this blog) and that’s why I now have 3 blogs where I used to have none.
