FYI: Slash7 is becoming Amy Hoy Planet ;)

Hello, incredibly intelligent and long-suffering readers!

You may have noticed that there are a few posts lately that A) have comments turned off, and B) go to another site if you click on ’em. That’s because those posts are being syndicated from my other blogs. I’ve set it up so that you, incredibly intelligent and productively-minded reader, don’t have to think about or even subscribe to those other blogs to achieve maximum Amy Exposure.

Which other blogs?

• Slash7 for code and random rants (You Are Here, baby!)
• Cheerful Software for carefully researched, spanky academic rants about interaction design
• Unicorn Free for no-magic-pixie-dust advice on creating & selling your own products
• the Freckle blog, but only the posts about useful freelancing advice

In short, this is all the stuff I’ve ever written about, all in one place.

But… why?

I’ve tried to divvy up my blog several times before, with absolutely zero success. This time is different, though, and let me tell you why.

I’m doing it for Teh Marketing.

While I love Ruby, and I love the Ruby community even more, I’m trying to cultivate some very specific “that girl who” labels:

• I want to be known as a thoughtful, radical interaction design expert (not “that Rails girl who designs”)
• I want to be known as somebody who gives fabulously sensible, functional, and fun business advice
• I want to reach freelancers & consultants, to help them improve their businesses, and help get some exposure for Freckle (which has all sorts of profit-improving)

Now, I’m not a famewhore. Yes, I want to be more famous — but only because I’m trying to do something big.

All this wiggling around, trying to figure out what to do, what image to try to cultivate, how to keep it real, has made me realize what, at heart, I really, deeply, truly believe in:

Helping people improve lives, through software and business.

Barf, right? I know. Sounds like the slogan of some horrible megacorp that creates GM food and then sues subsistence farmers, with a side order of clubbing kittens.

I just haven’t got the right words for it yet. Here are some of the things I want to do to make it happen:

• encourage freelancers to stop undercharging! to bill for all the time they actually spend, to know their true hourly rate, to charge based on value and not expenses, to require deposits — in short, to run more professional, successful businesses
• stand as a challenge to lazy or set-in-their-ways designers, to challenge them to up their game, to make software that makes people feel good to use it
• inspire 1,000 people to create their own products and earn enough to quit their jobs, or quit freelancing
• tell the world that a person who only codes for others, or designs for others, or writes for others, is a person who is only living half their potential

That doesn’t sound quite as barfy, does it?

I’m still figuring this shit out

Deciding on the tone, the world your work will live in, the angle of attack, whether to sometimes be snarky or always be encouraging and optimistic… what to tell people about what you do… this shit’s all incredibly hard. It’s like trying to get born.

I’ve been struggling with it a lot lately, because lots of things come easy to me, and this isn’t coming easy at all. It’s come down to a near-rebellion: “Well, if it takes effort, and time… screw it!” (A sentiment I’m sure you smart people identify with.)

That’s why so many false starts with other little blogs or Twitter accounts that fell by the wayside. And that’s why the content I’m creating now still seems schizophrenic.

In short: Thank you for bearing with me!

And I hope that my documentation of my reasons & struggles are edifying, interesting, or at least funny!