This is the last in my series of posts describing the who, what, why, and how of this blog. For anyone reading this blog, I’m sure I know what you’re saying: “Enough already! Where’s the beef?!”

Well, one thing that should become apparent with this blog is my need to define and constrain before I begin working on a project. Definitions and constraints make it easier to focus on the depth of a project, rather than the breadth of a project. For example, having already defined what this blog will be about, I know I don’t have to consider every topic that crosses my mind for my next post. I’m constraining myself to certain topics, but in doing so I’m forcing myself to dig deeper into those topics. Or at least, that’s the idea anyways.

Here are the definitions and constraints that will shape the Enter Venture blog:

Length of Posts

More than anything else in a writer, I value succinctness. I’ll take the shortest version of an idea over a long, verbose version any day. I tend not to be a stream of consciousness type of writer. Rather, I construct my writing around broken pieces of a whole though and figure out how to connect them as I go. Sometimes this leads to terse sentences, orphaned in the midst of other ideas. That’s something I need to work on (see Get Better below).

“If I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter.” – Mark Twain

Twain’s quote hits on another part of this equation — writing succinctly is hard. If given the time, I could spend days on each blog post, extrapolating on extrapolations, whittling out unnecessary words and phrases. I wont though. I have a day job, and this is only one of my night jobs.

Instead, I’m limiting the time I’ll allow myself to write posts to 1-2 hours. If I can’t perfect a post in that time, either my readers will have to live with the results, or my post just isn’t ready for prime time

Type of Posts

I already wrote about what I’ll be writing about, but defining the type of my posts is different. I could say I’ll be writing about web applications and then simply posts links to new web apps. I wont, and that’s what this part of my MO is all about.

I’ll attempt to write medium-sized posts rather than long or short posts. Part of the reason for this is the time constraints I’m placing on myself. Another reason for writing medium-sized posts is that at this early stage in my web/entrepreneur/blog career, I’m much better off listening than talking. Eventually that’ll mean listening to my readers, but for now, that’s only two people. Instead, I’ll save you the long posts and spend more of my time learning my ass off so that I’ll have ideas and experience enough to warrant longer posts.

Last, I plan to categorize my posts, but I don’t think tags are for me.  I’ve yet to completely buy into the utility of tags, and tag clouds are all but useless.  We’ll see if this changes.

Get Better

In just a few posts, I’ve already picked up on where I need to bolster my writing abilities. I need to become better at creating whole, connected ideas, rather than fragments of thoughts. I also need to focus on writing well the first time. This will help reserve as much of the 1-2 hours for ideas, rather than edits.

The blog itself has to get better. I’m happy with my decision to start this blog in minimalist style because I can now focus on adding the right pieces, in the right places, at the right time. Since launching, I’ve updated my feed so it’s directed through feedburner (Who knew the wordpress theme didn’t track your subscribers?). Other updates that I have planned for the blog are as follows:

• Add comments — There are a variety of ways to manage comments. I’m not sure if I want them here or elsewhere.
• Make the CSS standards compliant — I should have done this first, but I didn’t. I’m sure I’ll have learned my lesson when I make the updates. Hopefully this will solve some of the issues I’ve seen with this blog’s theme in IE. I need to get my hands on a PC to fix this.
• Add widgets — I don’t want a blog with 1,000 different widgets in the sidebar, but I’m sure there are some that make sense.
• Add links — After a period of blog subscription overload, I’m in the process of narrowing the list of blogs I really care about. Stay tuned for a Links section in the sidebar.
• Improve the theme — I plan to keep Enter Venture simply designed, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be polished.
• Add trackbacks/pings — I’m not doing this just yet because I want to establish my theme a bit more before announcing this blog’s existence.

This is a sampling of improvements I plan to incorporate into the blog. Some of the changes will be obvious to readers of Enter Venture, some wont. I recently installed the WP-Cache plugin to reduce the Wordpress CPU demand. I’m not sure how anyone would recognize this addition other than monitoring their CPU usage, but it’ll hopefully save my site from crashing if I ever make it to the big time.

Have Fun

In the short time that I’ve been writing, I’ve already recognized how valuable this blog will be for my own enjoyment. Enter Venture will be the place where I’ll be able to formalize and broadcast my thoughts. How cool is that?

In future posts, I’ll describe how I’ve finally discovered something that I truly enjoy doing. I like blogging so far, but I know that I love making products. Actually, I haven’t really made anything yet, but I know that’s something I’ll be learning to do during my nights / weekends. After my first few undergraduate classes of Java, I thought I’d never enjoy… Err. Actually, let’s save that for a longer post. I like web products. I’m having fun. On to the next reason…

This blog has even introduced me to new people already! (Shout out to Dave Yen from Michigan / StudentFounders.com.)

Forget Everything

I reserve the right to throw out everything I’ve ever said and start anew. It baffles me that politicians aren’t allowed to change their mind. Who doesn’t change their mind? I’ll argue a point to death if I think I’m right, but if someone convinces me otherwise in a sentence or two, I’ll completely retract. I’d rather retract and be right than be stubbornly wrong.

These definitions and constraints are just guiding principles. If I have an idea for something else, I’m going to follow it. After all, if I can’t make the rules on my own blog, where can I?

That’s my MO. And now, on to the beef!

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