Tim Bray speaking about blogging at the moment about writing about what you know. It’s 9am at the northernvoice conference and today I’m going to be blogging about the events here at Northern Voice. Here’s the bullet points of Tim’s speech:

• fill your blog with links. Link to other people. Link often. If it doesn’t have links then it’s not a link.
• smart people in the world are usually where you are not
• Post often. In periods where prolific, readership goes up.
• Correct yourself.
• Generalize. Make some general point. General will live longer
• Flame judiciously. Anger gives flavor. He feels that if you are angry about something then you should share it. “It’s entirely ok for bloggers to be unreasonable … sometimes.”
• Spell-check. Quality matters. Mark Cuban cited as example of blogger who doesn’t use apostrophes, but one that can get by with it because of “style.”
• Look good. Bray feels that a good-looking blog generally speaks to the quality of the blog. I disagree with this one. Most programmers are not graphic designers and some fo the most useful sites on the web are ones that are not all that graphically pleasing: Google, Craigslist, eBay, for example.
• Be brief. Tighten it up.
• Be intense.
• Don’t tell secrets.
• Don’t ruin your life. Don’t lose your job over what you say.
• Don’t blog on command.

Some questions/comments after the speech: Tim Bray says that having 1000 bloggers at Sun has helped, it has increased the listening power. Someone in the audience didn’t know who/what Sun was (laughter in audience)

Along the wall with carpeted seating, there were generous power strips, but no power in the stadium seating. I had to make my move to an outlet along the wall. Scoble is up next…

• Northern Voice #4: Stephen breaks blogging Downes
• Northern Voice afterthoughts and review
• Vista voice recognition instructional video
• Will second batch of blogging books be better than first?
• Hey Shelley, here’s a link from a guy!
• How Ted Leonsis worked his blog to the top for a Google vanity search