A long time ago I had a personal blog that I kept up to date, also called Dan’s Blog. I started it in High School, and continued it through University. I got a little known through the blogging community in New Zealand, but shortly after starting work became less invested in it.

Time passed, and I moved on. A version of my blog existed when I moved to the UK in 2012, but that version is long gone now. It was a strange amalgamation of blog mixed with travel microblog.

I had been thinking about my internet habits over the past few years, and recently realised that almost all my internet usage revolves around one website – Reddit.

How did we get here?

There was a period of time where the internet was a chaotic place. Everyone made their own website. Everyone had fun, doing goofy stuff. I think about all the laments about Gen Z memes and how “crazy” they are, but remember sites like NewGrounds and AlbinoBlackSheep.com that had equally incomprehensible memes and things that we discussed at school.

But instead of spreading across multiple sites and forums, they all narrowed in. TikTok is the social platform today. Previously there was Facebook, Twitter, and even older, MySpace, and Bebo.

And before then you had GeoCities, Tripod, or just hosting it yourself.

Just prior to the likes of MySpace and Bebo, you had the world of blogging. Typically self hosted, these websites reigned supreme. It seems the version of the blog today is the subscription based newsletters powered by Substack. Even Ghost, which looked to take on WordPress, has turned into promoting itself as a newsletter hosting service.

But now the internet mostly revolves around a handful of sites, run by a handful of questionable people.

There has been the “dying internet theory” in the context of AI. But really, it’s been happening for sometime. It’s just the villain is different.

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Being the change

Do a search for “where did blogs go” and a lot of people have that exact same question. Some even asking a question “Is blogging dead?”

The answer seems to be “No.” But, as with everything, money has taken over.

So in trying to change my relationship with the internet, where I’m no longer just doom scrolling Reddit, and uploading my photos to Zuckerberg’s AI training, I’m going to go back to where my internet contributions began. With this blog.

Since my travel all that time ago, I worked at multiple companies in tech, got married, moved back to New Zealand, and switched careers to Product Management.

While my video gaming has become ever more, I’ve taken on bouldering, and tinkering with electronics and drawing, and my craft beer drinking has got even more niche.

There’s not that many blogs out there about technical (or platform) Product Management. And while there’s plenty out there about Engineering Management and Leadership, so much of the Product discourse is around leading Products (makes sense) and not so much people.

So that’s where I’ll be focussed here.

This will be a blog that will look at,

• What it means to be a technical product manager for engineering teams with the “world of AI” at our doorstep
• Leading product teams and that jump from engineering
• My occasional random other thoughts on the other hobbies I’ve been dabbling in

My aim is to write at least once a month to start with. I don’t know yet. I have a list of article ideas I’m going to take a stab at.

I hope I can build up somewhat of a small readership, but I’m not expecting anything just yet.

The internet may be dying. All our focus may be on centralised platforms. But I’m just going to try and contribute back and be part of the change I want to see.