Buck Hicks

To answer a question that no one has asked me. I want to explain what my purpose is here. Mainly I want to accomplish the following four things:

1. Practice my writing and communications skills.
2. Keep an (online) archive of interesting links and code samples that I can search and find later.
3. Expand the brand that is me – for whatever that means.
4. Publish things publicly so that I can create some accountability to myself even if I am the only one that ever takes account of the things I say. In others words the artificial pressure of posting things publicly and “pretending” I have an audience will help me keep moving forward. – And To be completely honest this is the one that is the most important to me and the rest are just icing on the cake.

So in the early stages of this blog some of my topics may seem random. However my intention is that I focus on consistency, right now, and not on any specific topic. In that way I can, at least, practice my writing and communication skills. The side benefit of this I can use the practice to cover the brand that is me.

At some point down the road I want to add some code samples and short tutorials but for now I am going to avoid them so I can keep the flow going. And lastly I am starting to loath the word brand when talking about myself so I am going stop using it immediately.

As of today (June 29th 2015) if you search google for Buck Hicks you will not find this blog. You may see some indirect links from Face Book where you could find me among some other Buck Hicks’ and eventually make it back to this site. But I don’t want to rely on Face Book for my success. You may also find me indirectly from links to other websites I have posted to or been involved with over the years but again I don’t want to rely on links from other sites for my success. I want this site to be the number one returned result for any search containing my name.

So this post is to mark this day and to serve as a reference for when I make it to number one. I should also say that I am not doing this for any sense of vanity. I am doing this so when someone looks for Buck Hicks as a potential technology consultant they will find me and not one of the other Buck Hicks listed on the first couple of result pages from Google.

The Soft Skills book mentioned in the last post was written by John Sonmez who also maintains the Simple Programmer’s website. If you are interested in personal branding or learning how to maximize your soft skills his site is an excellent place to start. As I mentioned in my last post this book and its author is what inspired me to start blogging again under the BuckHicks.net domain. The author, John Sonmez, posts frequently and the content is top notch. There is also a free 3 week course on how to get started blogging in the Simple Programmer’s Resource Section, which I am on day 3.

On a side note:

One of the early lessons for a successful blog from John is that you need to pick your niche. And the more specific the niche the better your blog will stand out from all the noise on the internet. And while I totally buy into that I am going to hold off on revealing my niche until I have better established a record of consistent posting. For now I am going to focus on getting to know the “Buck Hicks Brand”.

Hello. My name is Buck Hicks and I am from Three Rivers, MI. This is my fifth attempt at blogging. For me starting is always the easy part and I can even post on a consistent basis for a while but after some time, usually a week or two, I always drop off. Consistently.

So why I am starting blog number six? Especially at a time when blogging is becoming the second class citizen to podcasting. I am starting number six because of a book I recently started reading. The name of the book is Soft Skills: The software developer’s life manual (if you decide to buy this book please click the affiliate link in the right side bar) and it is a very different book then most technical books I have read.

The best way for me to describe it is to say that it is a book about developing the self or maybe more accurately refactoring the self. Anyway a big part of this book is about developers working on their personal brands so that they can maintain more control over their career and where it is headed.

I am about half way through the book and so far there is nothing that I have never heard before but there is something about this book that made the idea of building my personal brand just click. It was almost like – Why didn’t I think of this before? So I have been thinking a lot about why haven’t I already established my brand? Why are there people live in the same neighborhood that I do that don’t even know what it is I do for a living?

Every answer that I came up with sounded like an excuse. Well more accurately every answer I came up with WAS AN EXCUSE. There is no good reason for not putting effort into our future both personal and professional (talk more about that later) so this is my line in the sand. This is where I start to build the brand that is Buck Hicks.