Hello everyone! As every August 15th since 2016, I am publishing a blog post to celebrate my blog’s birthday! Technically in 2016, it was not a celebration of a birthday, but more the celebration of the start of this journey… but we developers are used to starting counting from 0, so we can say that it was the blog post for my 0th birthday…
It’s always a special day with me, that lets me think about everything that I’ve accomplished all over these 8 years of writing walls of text on this platform. I still think the biggest accomplishment that I had, apart from all the compliments and the awards, has been connecting with lots of people in the community. My main job is being a developer/tech lead, which makes me just stay in front of a computer in my cave and work all day. But this second activity of having a blog makes me speak with people on social media and at industry events (like AWE). It makes me travel, and in the last months, I’ve visited many countries like Finland, Germany, and the United States. It gives me human connections and this is what I love the most: I have met many fantastic people thanks to this blog. There are some of them that I haven’t met in real life yet, but I still perceive them as great friends. Another great thing is when I can help people: sometimes I have written some tutorials that have helped developers publish their games, or I have written a post about a product and this helped it get sales or investments. This is incredibly rewarding. This is why in 8 years of writing, I’ve never given up keeping this blog alive.
You may wonder why this year I’ve chosen this bold title. Well, let me tell the story behind it: a few weeks ago, I was at AWE and I was speaking with the amazing Alex VR. At a certain point another person arrives and Alex, as the super cool guy he is, introduces me to this person saying that I’m “the best VR blogger”. As usual, I blushed, and my brain started thinking that there’s no fucking way that I’m the best VR blogger, because there are many other people with more followers than me and many other people that write much better than me (just to make two examples, Ian Hamilton and Ben Lang are fantastic writers). When I write a new (wall of text) post, Grammarly flags so many errors, that the AI behind it uses the energy of a whole nuclear plant just to correct my English. But then I thought: Road To VR, Upload, Mixed… these are fantastic VR magazines… but they are not blogs. Nathie, Tyriell, Mike VRO, MRTV, Cas And Chary… amazing YouTubers...thousands of followers… but they are not bloggers. Luna and Brad… make 1000 leaks a week, but they are mostly on X (and YouTube for Brad)... and they are not real bloggers. So… who else is a VR blogger? Maybe, in the end, Alex is right… I may really be the best VR blogger out there… simply because there is no one else! I’m like the king of my castle, like a dance song I used to like said. (By the way, if you have a VR blog and I forgot to mention you, get in touch with me, and let’s connect!)
So I want to thank all of you for having let me be the best VR blogger all over these years. Thanks for every post you read, every social media follow, every email in which you said “thank you” for something I did, and every suggestion you gave me. Special thanks to the people that suggest me news to write, that pass me some leaks, and to all my Patreon donors that help me in keeping this platform alive! Thank you all, amazing community.
What’s next for me? I’m closing the blog today, goodbye everyone, it has been a nice journey. Ok, I’m kidding. I plan to keep the blog alive and keep writing stuff about XR and startups. Probably I’ll also add more AI to the mix since I’m studying more of it because it’s become a pervasive technology that it’s already everywhere. I’m doing a few more travels and in the next month, I’ll be in China (if you are there, let’s meet!). I’ve also a couple of new gadgets that I will try to use in the next weeks that should increase the quality of my content… thanks again to my Patrons for supporting me with their donations! (By the way, join my Patreon, if you want to support me, too)
I am also thinking about new ways of giving quality content to you of the XR community. At first, I thought about writing a mini-book with some advice for XR developers or startuppers, but then I thought it could be a big effort and I don’t know how many people would be interested in that. So I thought that maybe I could counterbalance my walls of text with some modern short video format like YouTube Shorts. Maybe I could publish once in a while a Youtube Short with a piece of advice for XR people… or try a different cut and publish a small video where I comment one of the news of the week in a fun way. I’m very interested in your opinion: do you think this can be a good idea? And what kind of content would you like to see? Let me know in the comments of this post, on social media channels, or in direct messages.
I don’t know what the future will reserve for me, but I’m sure that it will be with you amazing people of the XR community! Thanks again for all the things you do for me. And happy birthday to my blog! You are all welcome to my virtual party… the pieces of cake and the bub are on me 😉
(Header image created with Dall-E)