Tyner Blain – Five Years and Going Strong!

Hooray!

Tyner Blain is well into its fifth year, and I’m thrilled to say, going strong. The Tyner Blain blog turns 5 tomorrow – on Nov 24th 2010! Thanks so much to everyone who comes here to share, learn, teach, critique, and read!

Over Five Years

I created the blog here five years ago, and I couldn’t have realized then how valuable it would be to me. Here’s what I wrote at the time:

I have two goals for this blog.

  1. Make a positive impact on the community that cares about creating great software by stimulating thought, provoking debate, and sharing ideas.
  2. To become better at what I do. Writing helps me form better thoughts, and learning from the comments of readers makes me that much better.

If one person reads this blog and has a novel idea, or improves their team’s performance, or makes their software easier to use, I consider that a win.

Welcome to Tyner Blain

Those two goals still represent the vision for what I’m trying to accomplish with the blog. However, over time, two tangible and practical benefits have also emerged. They are the effect in the cause and effect of focusing on these two goals.

  1. Forming great relationships. I’ve made many friends and colleagues of people who I’ve met because of this blog. I know that some of these relationships will continue for many years. I missed having great professional relationships with co-workers (back when I worked for “the man”), and now, even as an independent consultant, thanks to the blog, I can still have these rewarding relationships.
  2. Finding great professional opportunities. Most of my recent professional engagements have come from conversations that started because of what I’ve written here. When I first started writing these articles, my mom asked me, very concerned, why I would “give it away for free” – wouldn’t that hurt my business? No, in fact, it dramatically helps my business. Add my story to the data points from Seth Godin and David Meerman Scott and a host of others.

Self-Congratulatory Statistic

Over the course of these five years, I’ve written 748 articles (including this one), covering product management, business analysis, agile, user experience, and a number of other interesting to me topics.

  • Number of articles published: 748
  • Number of words – 707 words per article on average – over 500,000 words total (to date)
  • Page views – 1,035,761 (as of 17 Nov, 2010, with no data from the first 6 months, reported by Google Analytics)
  • Subscribers – ~4300 by RSS

What’s Next?

I still believe I have the right vision statement for the Tyner Blain blog, so that won’t change. Otherwise – more of the same until I hear differently. Let me know what you’d like to see…

Thanks!

Thanks again, so much, for your time & more importantly engagement. I get more out of this than you (singular), and I’m humbled by the level of attention my writing gets here.

Thank you very much, and stick around for the next five years!

  • Scott Sehlhorst

    Scott Sehlhorst is a product management and strategy consultant with over 30 years of experience in engineering, software development, and business. Scott founded Tyner Blain in 2005 to focus on helping companies, teams, and product managers build better products. Follow him on LinkedIn, and connect to see how Scott can help your organization.

15 thoughts on “Tyner Blain – Five Years and Going Strong!

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  3. This blog has catapulted you to the top of the product management community and made you a leading voice for the right way to bring products to the market. Thanks for this!

    Also I am glad to say our interactions, largely as a result of this blog, have lead us to being friends. Thanks for this too!

    5 more years? Million words? Third goal required, come on! :)

  4. Scott

    Congratulations on a number of milestones, including the 5th anniversary. I wonder how many (as a percentage of blogs started) make it to 5 years with regular posts? I think it’s a very small percentage.

    Keep up the good work.

    Saeed

  5. Thanks, EVERYONE! for the continued reading & great relationships we’ve formed over the years. I really appreciate all the support and great conversations we’ve had.

    I’m really looking forward to the next five years.

    Anyone know how to have a comment-thread on a book? [I’m kidding – I do have some ideas….]

  6. Congratulations, I recently came across your blog a month ago and started reading it, I have been a Chief Software Architect and now a product manager, having worked at both ends of technical management, I find your blog very interesting for the practical realism in your posts unlike so many other blogs that regurgitate theory or cooked up stories. IMHO I think that is what makes your posts very informative for me. Keep up the good work.

    1. Thanks, Zen PDM! As someone else who grew out of the technical ranks, I really appreciate the validation that comes from running the gauntlet with someone who has your background, and coming out “ok” on the other side. I really appreciate the kind words and support, and look forward to hearing from you as you join in on more of the discussions here – lots of folks can benefit from your experiences!

  7. 5 years – congratulations!
    I remember first coming across your blog years ago and it being a bit of a revelation for me. For the longest time your blog was the only example I could point to of of a blog that consistently put out very high quality educational content. It was a stark contrast to many of the other blogs I was reading at the time that seriously favoured quantity over quality.
    You should be very proud of what you have created here – it’s a serious achievement.
    April

    1. Thanks, April!

      For me, being able to meet folks like you, form relationships, learn, and have fantastic conversations that help us all get better is the real achievement. My biggest concern when starting Tyner Blain as a consultancy was that I would be faced with a dearth of stimulating relationships.

      I remember feeling the exact same way when I found Rocket Watcher! So much great content and conversation that you’ve put out there too!

      Here’s to the next five years. :)

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  10. Congratulations, long may you prosper. Discovered this site couple of weeks ago and am learning and benefiting from lots of the information here. Good Work, Thanks.

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