Opaqueness

Seeing my newfound consistency on my blog, I felt I had to continue that trend and write again today. Following The Rule of Three*, I also knew that I would have to write about the website project one more time. I won't make it such a long read again, though.

I had a little trouble coming up what to write about this time that involved the website project, but then something I had thought about yesterday after writing my post came to mind again and I knew I had my topic. You see, after I had written yesterday I wondered why I had decided not to post the name of or link to the website just yet and whether I had made the right choice in doing so. What better topic is there than for me to explain my reasoning.

A bit back when I was on my most active period on twitter so far (which means that I wrote maybe a dozen tweets over a two month period but moreover that I actually followed some people in the actual sense of the word rather than the technical one twitter has made it out to be) I read a tweet about transparency. I think it may even have been a link to an article. The article explained how a startup should be as transparent as possible, to its employees as well as to the world. This would mean that it was going to be obvious when falling apart (to the employees as well as to business partners) which would mean that there was a lot more hat one could do about it than when it only became known much later. On top of that, the fact that the transparency would allow business partners to see that things weren't falling apart, which would give them confidence in your startup.

I am not starting a startup, so the story wasn't quite the same for me. However, I did try to take that lesson to heart as I saw the truth that was in it. So, from then on I tried to be more open about my own projects. And yet, what I am doing here is the exact opposite.

The key in here is in the fact that what people want to see through such transparency is progress. The one fact that shows things aren't falling apart  is the fact that you are making progress. And in the website project, I am not making any project. I mean, I didn't return to the project all the way, I just made the front page with the plan to shelve the project when I was done. On top of that, I have long ago decided that I am going to build this website on top of another piece of software I am developing. As such, returning to this project would mean working on that software, and that would mean that the website for the website project would not show any progress even if there was some.

As such, I decided not to give you guys the name of the project just yet. Or at least, that's my rationale for it, I made the choice before I made up the reason why I did, but that's just human nature. Let me also say that I have no doubt that there will be a day when the website is showing a lot of progress, then I will want as much exposure as possible. I will make the promise that when that time comes, this will be the first place where I publicly post the address and name of the site. Of course, I am keeping the option open to publish those details earlier here, so it may also just be that by that time I already have published the name and url here.

See you around, guys!

*Let me apologize to anyone who I got trapped on tvtropes. The site just is too awesome not to link to, though..