I was tagged by Thejesh on a series of questions that he had answered about blogging.

I am so happy to be back in blogosphere. I have discovered many interesting people through Thej’s weekly notes & blogring. I am also trying to contact them to know more about their work and interesting projects they are doing. Thank you Thej.

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

I started blogging long back in 2012. At that time it was a fascination to understand the technology, while using wordpress it was ’need of connect with new people’ (I was 17yr old exploring / figuring my career - studies - life ).

current ‘Why’ :

• Documenting and sharing my work and life

• Till a year ago I was mostly blogging in Gujarati language. Now I am blogging in English so I can connect and share with more people.

• Through weekly notes I try to document updates about what is happening in my life. What am I reading, watching, learning, doing, my side projects. I don’t share much about my full time work / organization. I tried sharing about previous org, but they somehow read it and HR called me and asked to delete the post. I can not mention in my weekly notes about what is happening in my project or team. Fair enough, so now I write about it in private note and talk more about my side projects. For me working in education / with children is not like a job. It is like a way of my life, an integral part of my life so I want to document - talk - share about everything.

• I used to write a blog post category called ‘Update’ in my previous blog but after reading Thej’s weekly notes, last year I have started writing in ‘weekly note’ format.

• Apart from weekly notes, I have three major blog post categories :

1. Filed notes : (learning experience with children / notes from session / classroom / workshop / facilitation)
2. Learning resources : (research papers, videos, any kind of material related to education, child development, PBL, Experiential learning and other interest areas)
3. Other : opinion / short note / comments about technology / education / philosophy / anything

• I also host my published articles, creative writing and my portfolio of work on the same site.

What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it? Have you blogged on other platforms before?

I have used many different platforms: blogspot, wordpress, php site, medium, used instagram for blogging..Here you can read my blogging journey.

Currently I am using the Hugo site hosted on github pages.

I have realized that my site is going to be image heavy and github is not suitable for that. There is limit to host your site on GH Pages. Since the last few days I have been trying to figure out the feature proof solution for the same. Friends suggested different options : go for CDN & Image storing on cloudinary / S3 , Ghost, Blot, self host on pi, build hugo site in local machine and host public folder on VM.

I want a solution where I can put all my data in one place (not like images in different place and text files are in different place). I don’t want to lock in, I want to control my own data. I am also ready to pay 3-4k annually.

I am convinced to go for the last option. Let’s see when I get a chance to set up and how it goes.

How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?

I write all my posts, edit my pages on sublime text. Friends suggested VS Code but I am still in love with sublime.

Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?

Mostly I publish immediately. Sometimes I make drafts of weekly notes, add to it throughout the week and write the final version during Friday / weekend. Sometimes I use a paper journal to note down points.

What’s your favorite post on your blog?

• I never bought a new laptop

From my Gujarati blog :

• સંવેદનશીલતાના પ્રેમની કેળવણી
• facilitation બોલે તો ?

Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

As I mentioned above, I am planning to shift my blog on S3 kind of server. So I can publish more images without worrying about github limits.

Apart from that I need to make a workflow where :

• When I do a session with children, Write a post + publish photos in the ‘field notes’ category. Put that link in a page called documentation with date and meta data. Duplicate that on linkedin + Instagram
• Maintain ‘Now’ page + archive, add side projects in documentation page. Make documentation page as master archive page.

Who’s next?

I am tagging Kartik Mistry.