I must admit, I’m a huge fan of Ivan Peplnjak. This despite the fact that he is a major thorn in the side of product management at Cisco. It is, of course, his job to be a thorn in our side and Ivan is too smart to ignore. He has a long history with Cisco, with networking, and his opinions are well thought out and highly technical. He is a true network engineer. The fact that I like Ivan does not mean he gave me an easy time a few years back when I did a podcast with him on NETCONF at Cisco Live Berlin.
Ivan had an interesting post recently entitled “Keep Blogging, Some of Us Still Read“. It reminds of my own tongue-in-cheek FAQ for this blog, in which I said I wouldn’t use a lot of graphics because I intended my blog for “people who can read”. As a blogger, I think I quite literally have about 3 regular readers, which occasionally makes me wonder why I do it at all. I could probably build a bigger readership if I worked at it, but I really don’t work at it. I think part of the reason I do it is simply that I find it therapeutic.
Anyhow, the main claim Ivan is responding to is that video seems to be dominant these days and blogging is becoming less rewarding. There is no question video creation has risen dramatically, and in many ways it’s easier to get noticed on YouTube than on some random blog like mine. Then again, with the popularity of SubStack I think people are actually still reading.
Ivan says “Smart people READ technical content.” Well, perhaps. I remember learning MPLS back in 2006 when I worked at TAC. I took a week off to run through a video series someone had produced and it was one of the best courses I’ve taken. Sometimes a technical person doesn’t want to learn by reading content. Sometimes listening to new concepts explained well at a conversational pace and in a conversational style is more conducive to actually understanding the material. This is why people go to trade shows like Cisco Live. They want to hear it.
I’ve spent a lot of time on video lately, developing a series on technical public speaking as well as technical videos for Cisco. In the process I’ve had to learn Final Cut Pro and DaVinci resolve. Both have, frankly, horrendous user interfaces that are hard to master. Nine times out of ten I turn to a YouTube video when I’m stuck trying to do something. Especially with GUI-based tools, video is much faster for me to learn something than screen shots.
On the other hand, it’s much harder to produce video. I can make a blog post in 15 minutes. YouTube videos take hours and hours to produce, even simple ones like my Coffee with TMEs series.
The bottom line is I’m somewhere down the middle here. Ivan’s right, technical documentation in video format is much harder to search and to use for reference. That said, I think video is often much better for learning, that is for being guided through an unfamiliar concept or technology.
If you are one of my 3 regular readers and you would prefer to have my blogs delivered to your inbox, please subscribe at https://subnetzero.substack.com/ where I am cross-posting content!
7 Comments
I’m not sure I want to move to substack. I enjoy that I get your latest posts via my RSS reader, miniflux.
Hey, well, that’s one third of my readership so I better be careful what I do 🙂
Thanks for the feedback. I wasn’t sure if people were using RSS. I’ll keep cross-posting for the indefinite future. Maybe I can figure out the APIs to do it in an automated way. Substack is easier to manage but I don’t think they’ll support RSS as it would break their model.
And now you have four regular readers 😉
I totally agree a well-made video could explain some intricate concepts (example: packet walks, header rewrites) much better than text, and a picture is still worth a thousand words, but unfortunately one rarely gets that level of quality within the current barrage of videos due to the high production costs (even if that’s only time spent on the video) that you mentioned.
Oh wow, the Ivan Peplnjak himself, I’m humbled 🙂
That’s a fair point, and I did note that point in your article as well. (And when I was first trying to figure out what the hell “SDN” meant, I spent a lot of time going through your webinars which are a good example of quality videos.) And your point in the article about steam-of-consciousness type videos is an excellent one as well. These are becoming common and yet they are far less helpful than written content. That’s why I bought a teleprompter to do the video series I’m working on. Even though it’s in a conversational tone, I wanted to write and revise a script before recording. Now if I can just find the time to edit them…
+1 for RSS, coming from another regular reader here 🙂
I do seem to have the same issue. Been bloging for 7 years now, but started doing YouTube a year or so ago. YouTube is much easier to get views & interaction, but at the same time I’ve seen a big uptick in traffic to my blog coming from my videos. Trying to put out complimentary pieces, where the blog goes into more detail than the video, but the video does a better job of demonstrating certain things. To your point though, man do videos take FOREVER to create… I think I’m at ~15-30 hours per video.
I’m also curious about your video technical public speaking course? Where might someone find that?
Thanks for continuing to write!
Thanks for letting me know about the RSS. More readers doing that than I realized.
Ah the technical public speaking videos… Let me tell the story.
After I got Hall of Fame Distinguished Speaker at Cisco Live, I really wanted to do a video series on how to speak well. I found that there are a lot of great public speaking courses, but they’re all written and taught by non-technical people. I wanted to make a series on how to break down technical concepts. I had the idea to do this against a green screen with a simple background. Initially I attempted this with a rollup green screen and a webcam. It didn’t work at all. Over a period of a couple months, I started buying more and more video equipment, until I had a full studio with all kinds of lighting, a huge green screen, a high-end camera, wireless microphones, a new iMac, Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve, and even a teleprompter. I went a little nuts, any my wife was annoyed, but hey, COVID.
I edited maybe three of the videos and got bored with it, and I wasn’t sure the content was what I was hoping for. I also wasn’t sure anyone was interested. I really should get back to it, I wasted a lot of money. Maybe your comment is a good nudge to get back into it. 🙂
That video series would definitely be worth producing, and if just a few people get something from it we’d live in a better world (considering some of the presentations I had to endure). Looking forward to it 😉