The Great Mind Challenge

Body

Back in October, Daryl Pereira asked me for an interview about my blog. I get a lot of these requests, but this one was different. Daryl is on the IBM DeveloperWorks team, and he was going to interview me to for the "Great Mind Challenge". This is a fun competition for a group of about 100 college students from San Jose State University to get them to learn blogging best practices and techniques.

The call was recorded and converted to a podcast, you can listen to it on the post titled [Insights from developerWorks top blogger Tony Pearson]. Here is the full chart deck:

During the interview, Daryl asked me about three blog posts in particular that got a significant number of hits.

[IBM Watson - How to build your own "Watson Jr." in your basement]

This was the one post that put me into the #1 position, with over 70,000 hits so far and counting, and that does not include all the people who read my blog through feed readers or the various cross-postings on IBM Storage Community and IBM Virtual Briefing Center.

This blog post was part of a series on IBM Watson, the computer that beat two humans on the "Jeapoardy!" television game show. Having worked closely with the IBM Research scientists to understand how IBM Watson worked so that I could blog about it, I thought a good way for readers to appreciate how it was put together was to explain how to assemble a scaled-down version. My inspiration was an article by John Pultorak that explained [how to build your own Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) in your basement].

The blog post series proved to be a big hit. IBM Watson helps to demonstrate many modern computer techniques, including business analytics of Big Data, Cloud Computing, and parallel programming techniques such as Hadoop. Showing that a "Watson Jr." could be built in your basement helped to emphasize that IBM Watson was made from hardware and software that are generally available today.

[IBM Japan - Mailbag of Interesting Reactions]

I try to be edgy in my blog, try new things, explore new areas of discussion. Sometimes, that triggers an odd variety of reactions, and in this blog post, I explore those reactions.

[Double Drive Failure Debunked: XIV Two Years Later]

I am very proud of this blog post. I worked with Moshe Yanai and the rest of the XIV team to be completely accurate and correct to set the right level of expectations. So many false statements and FUD had been thrown out about what would happen if a double drive failure happened during the short 30 minute window of opportunity, and it turns out that in most cases, no data is lost, and in all other cases, the lost data can be easily identified and restored. In most cases, this will be less recovery required than a double drive failure on a traditional RAID-5 disk array.

It was also an opportunity to try out Animoto to create a short and simple video. Normally, when marketing needs a video made, it will cost 25,000 dollars USD or more, and take weeks to produce. I was able to get this video done in just a few hours with no out-of-pocket expenses.

After this post, nearly all FUD in the blogosphere about double drive failures disappeared. More importantly, the XIV sales that quarter (2Q2010) was substantially better than the prior quarter. Many XIV sales reps credit this blog post for that huge bump in XIV sales! I guess this could be the Tony Pearson equivalent of the [Colbert Bump].

In 2009 and 2010, I was the third most influential blogger on IBM's Developerworks, and now in 2011, I have risen to number one position! Internally, we call this "Winning the Devy" (like an Emmy, but for DeveloperWorks bloggers). I would like to thank all my readers for continuing to share in the conversation!

technorati tags: IBM, Daryl Pareira, DeveloperWorks, San Jose State University