Website Organisation & Motivations

The organisation and motivations for my building and maintaining a personal website were first written about when I launched my wordpress website in the year 2017.

Since then (2017) I have moved from wordpress to jekyll static website. I have also refined and focused the organisation and my motivations for my website, which I have detailed below.

Motivation

My personal website was built and is maintained for me to consolidate and document my career journey. This includes documenting my:

research activities,
projects that I worked on,
project management activities
or even thoughts and ideas

This website also acts as a place:

for me to practice my technical writing and communication
to consolidate my online profiles and manage my online footprint
for collaborators or people interested to see the type of projects I have worked on and my technical skills
to document my experiences as a software developer and researcher

Publishing criteria

In this section I wanted to detail the publishing criteria for adding content to my website.

What is my criteria for deciding if I should publish certain content or not?

If I spend a certain amount of time on a task which I deem as non trivial, then it would qualify to be published on my site. The main purpose is that I can document the output of my effort on this (non trivial) task and provide some solution to the problem at hand. I can then use this as a means to refer to in the future, or use as a reference for team mates or colleagues etc.

The second reason for publishing on my site is that it helps me to formulate my thoughts and ideas into a format that can be digested by others. Writing as if someone else will read helps me refine the outputs and produce something with a bit more clarity.

Another good reason for publishing to this website is that my efforts on a particular problem may indeed help others along the way.

Many emails, thoughts, ideas and non trivial activities simply stay locked away in word documents or emails. How many times are they read (or skim read) and then disregarded, not to be seen again? This is a shame.

I wanted to do take an alternative approach

I took inspiration from my PhD supervisor, who would published any significant outputs to his personal website. Be it code/software or any other documents. I found this incredibility useful at times, and so I follow in his foot steps.

Essentially this website documents my ongoing journey as a software developer and beyond.

Organisation

The organisation of my website categories are as follows:

Research -: My research related content. mainly research projects I have been involved with or papers I have published (conference, journal, posters, abstracts ect). Information will be directed at a general public audience, in an effort to disseminate my research in a more accessible format and language. I will aim to explain the research and its context (with other publications and how it fits with my own research). This category can also be used to publish research work (linked to a project) that has not made it to publication but is still valuable.
Projects -: An archive of completed projects that I have worked on. This containing a technical description and code details.
Dev -: Used for software development related content which is not a complete project or a technical guide. “Useful code snippets and development references” Using this ‘Dev’ category keeps the ‘Projects’ and ‘Technical Guides’ categories more concise, listing only completed projects and useful guides.
Discourse -: This category is used for written communication on new ideas, point of view or is thought provoking in nature. It may contains debate, speculation, or personal opinion and analysis. This category is distinct from the Reference Material category which aims to cover factual aspects (albeit which I have interpreted), were as this category can contain thoughts, ideas and opinions.
Guides -: Content that provides useful information on a technical topic or provides guides on technical Installation of software libraries, how to solve development and technical related problems. Content that can primarily be used for my own reference.
Management -: Project and team management tips and techniques I have encountered (e.g SCRUM and PRINCE2). Includes Teamwork and Motivation content.
Self Development -: Used to document any processes or new techniques I am trying out for personal development or growth. Also used to keep track of any courses I want to take and books on my reading list.
ThisWeekILearnt -: A regular segment on what I have learnt each week.
ProgrammingPlaylist -: I tend to listen to a select few tracks on repeat while I programme. This category is a place to share what is on my programming play list from week to week.