Tuesday, June 30, 2009

My circle of interest

About a year ago I read Grant Hollidays post on What’s your circle of interest ? (the question originating from Paul Stovel). Grant’s post got me thinking about my own circles, I decided that if I ever started blogging, my first post would be to define my circles of interest. So here I am with my first post and my circles.
The Circles are defined as three categories like this:

Core
These are things I enjoy, care about, and follow as much as I can. When news breaks in these areas, I try to stay on top. I like to think I’m an expert in some of them, and have strong opinions on the rest.
Non-core
I find myself working with these things, or have a minor interest in them, but tend to follow announcements occasionally. I have opinions and will probably complain if I don’t like certain aspects of them, but I’m not about to start evangelising them.
I don’t care
The only time I spend in these things is to decide whether I care or not. I don’t really use them. I don’t pay much attention to them. I prefer not to work in any of these areas.



Drawing the circles and getting it down on paper was a bit harder than I anticipated from the start. As I struggled with it and the definitions I noticed that I looked at my topics from two different viewpoints. Some topics are in focus if I think from the point of doing the right thing to solve a business need; others are from the perspective of doing it right when developing a solution.