Kevin McKee
Why Blog? - Kevin McKee
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Why Blog?

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Why would anyone want to spend time creating a blog? There's the obvious answer: because it's fun to create something.

But actually blogging?

There's a big difference between creating a web application for blogging, and then writing content for that blog. I have a hunch that a lot of developers finally get their blog just right, and then never write anything.

I find, in life, that it's important to ground myself in the "why" behind any behavior I'm doing. What is my personal "why" for this blog?

The main reasons I blog are the following:

Help Future Me

My favorite blog is one where I spent a lot of time being frustrated with trying to solve a problem, and then I finally figure it out.

I know I will have this problem again in the future, so I want to write it down and refer back to it.

Writing out the steps to solve a problem I know I will have again is a fantastic way to help "future me".

In fact, in the middle of writing this post I needed to connect Sequel Pro to the Laravel Forge server that hosts this blog. I don't do this often so I wrote myself a blog post on my company site: https://intellow.com/connect-to-laravel-forge-database-via-sequel-pro/

I've since taken a full time job at Buildingstars so I don't run that company anymore but the blog content is still super useful to me.

Selfishly, this is the biggest motivator for me to post a blog.

Help Other People

If I have a problem, there's a good chance someone else has it too. In fact, I had never looked at the Google Analytics on my company site until just now, and in the last week I had over 200 pageviews on my blog.

It's not a bunch of traffic, but there's something really nice about knowing that I've been helpful to dozens of people in the last week.

Build My Brand

The more I blog, the more people I can help. The more helpful I am to people in this community, the more people will come to know and trust me.

As more people know and trust me, my goal one day is to translate that into an opportunity to speak at conferences, with Laracon US (or EU or AU for that matter, I'd love to travel with my wife) being the ultimate goal.

I've actually tried to put a lot of thought into why I care about speaking at a big conference.

I'm not running my own business anymore so it's not like I need the publicity to earn my living.

In general, I just really like public speaking and helping people. If I can come up with a great talk that helps people either make their job easier, or makes them think about something they hadn't considered before, that would make me feel pretty darn awesome.

Speaking of helping people, here are some things I've done that may be helpful to you:


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