Hello, 2015 (belatedly)

Well, better late than never, I suppose.

2015 has been for a few months, and I'm FINALLY getting down to publishing my first blog of the New Year.

Ha, ha- I actually wrote that in December of 2014- this is an indicator of how my year has been going so far.

I've written and rewritten the beginning of this blog several times, and for some reason I've never gotten past this paragraph. So far, 2015 has been the Year of Twitter for me, and not the year of Blog.

I've had a Twitter account for some time (@cjoelharrison) but hadn't been really active there. Jennifer had gotten started there sometime after I had, and currently has nearly 400 followers. Mind you, we don't compete at this online stuff (we really don't- its just not in us to!), I think that sometime around the New Year, though, I decided to make my Twitter account a more viable part of my "personal branding" strategy. I've focused my feed on the following: #data, #coding, #tech and #faith. And while I think this blog will still be an important of my "personal branding" strategy", I think Twitter will have a more prominent place in that strategy, simply because of its immediacy. After all, even though the blog is often a work of love and art (at least in my eyes), my Twitter feed is a work of NOW!, thanks in no small part to my smartphone.

Another huge draw of Twitter is its immediacy.With a blog, one develops a following. I've got to say my blog has really blown me away with its reach: in the space of a year, I managed to garner readers on six continents. In roughly a month on Twitter, though, I went from approximately 50 followers to a hundred. The interesting thing about the growth process is this: a typical blog takes ~3 hours to produce. This includes coming up with an idea for the blog, as well as the writing and possible inclusion of pictures. Then, even after the editing that goes on during the writing process, it needs to be proofed. Finally, it is published. With Twitter, I have very little original content- I'm more of a conduit for other content... I find something that's already been e-published, and merely retweet it for anyone who might find that particular hashtag interesting. Since I've followed this plan, my little corner of the twittersphere has expanded considerably.

That's all for now. Data is (yet again!) on hold, although I've been devoting some time to learning Python. 2015 is shaping up to be a fun year!