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View Full Version : My thoughts... (and perhaps something useful)



rdenis
17th August, 2010, 08:13 PM
I will apologize in advance for the length of this post. (Also, not sure if this is the right forum for this so please move it if need be.)

I am a Chartered Accountant by trade but my hobbies are widely varied from crunching numbers. I love logic and problem solving in many contexts and as such, topics involing logic and problem solving have always interested me. In High School, I was a science nut - I started University as an Engineering Major (Robotics) but made a life changing decision after the first year.

Like many I stumbled onto DK via a Google search for automotive related topics - specifically I had been trying to learn as much as I can about the next generation in car vehicle communication networks (still can't get that Engineer side out of me). I joined about three weeks ago as a requirement to view certain topics/sections. I did post a very short hello in the introductions thread more so out of obligation than a real want to "introduce" myself.

Since the shutdown/timeout/cleansing/etc., I have gone through a myriad of thoughts and emotions. At first, I was like "no big deal, I'll wait until they sort it out." Also, I was a bit non-chalant about the whole issue as I thought, well I am new here and I haven't really become attached to the site so big deal. I posted a few of what I would characterize as "post counters", not really participating, but more so "going through the motions" and killing time waiting for the issues to sort themselves out. As days went by, some of the thoughts and comments posted by Devilfish, Drakov, amongst other veterans here started to resonate differently with me. I started to question why was I bothering to "go through the motions"? What was I really trying to accomplish? It started me on a journey of self reflection that has been oddly satisfying in ways I could never have imagined.

As I said previously, I am a bean counter by profession so please forgive my indulgence in $ and cents.

I am not a computer techie by any stretch of the imagination, but I am a huge Intenet fan in terms of enabling myself to learn about subjects I never would have had any practical access to previously. When I analyze my own personal "learning" growth over the past ten years, I have gathered and learned information in all sorts of areas such as woodworking, metalworking, microcontroller programming (PICs), assembly language, vehicle CANbus's, welding, soldering, electronics, blogging, finding information fast, building PC's, etc. - and that is just off the top of my head at the moment.

I am far from being an expert in any of these areas, but I have gained enough knowledge (and pretty much for free), that I have saved myself tens of thousands of dollars thorugh personal application of this knowledge over the years. Without the internet and the growth of personal communications and information sharing enabled by forums such as DK, I would never had had the opprtunity to harness the power of the Internet. Conservatively I will bet the knowledge I have gained would easily have cost from 50K to 100K in formal education had I paid for it myself.

As I said am an accountant so it was important for me to try and monetarily value what "I have taken" from the internet over the past decade or so. Of course I must also analyze the other side of the ledger as well.

Yikes - my balance sheet is not even close to being balanced. I could try and justify or argue that I have given back to those from which I have taken. But it is miniscule in comparison to what I have taken. This realization along with what DF and others have said really started to ring home for me. I cannot change what has happened in the past, but I can change the path forward.

Changing behaviour is hard - we are all busy, we all fool ourselves by saying we will change or that things will be different in the future. Being aware of past behaviour is, I believe, the first step to trying to improve oneself in the future. I believe I have found something in myself that was always there but sorely underutilized or lacking - my ability to harness the knowledge I have gained over the years in a different way - to begin to understand that knowledge I have and will continue to gain needs to be shared honestly. As they say, baby steps...

Last night as all these ideas were ringing in my head I started looking at other areas of the DK forum. I found that there were some questions/issues being posted by others where I had some knowledge that I had previously gleaned from other areas of the internet. I also discovered that if I didn't have the answer I could find it since I had developed a skillset to find knowledge. Dammit I started to realize, I had this whole knoweldge sharing thing all wrong.

The value in participating in a forum isn't the quantity of posts nor posting information just for the sake of posting something that may or may not be useful. The value of participating in a forum is the personal growth you experience by having discussions with others who may or may not be like minded. It's value is the growth of the human experience.

**************

Oh yeah, I haven't forgotten, my title post suggests "my thoughts and perhaps something useful".

Well as for something useful, I can only encourage everyone to search for their own answers. Self-reflection is a powerful tool if you take it seriously and put an honest effort into it. You need to be honest with yourself to gain any real value from it - it can truly be enlightening and you may not like everything it reveals about yourself. The good news is it enables you to change yourself.

The easiest way I found to embark on this was to start with looking at why I couldn't or wasn't willing to share my knowledge and my information. I needed to find the honest answer to "why not?". For me it was always an excuse of I am too busy or someone else will answer or I can't be bothered or I don't know and I can't take the effort to find out. Not good, but I found my answer and I am at peace with that part of it. My journey continues just as life continues.

So what if you were/are like me and routinely go through the motions or just can't be bothered? What if you are new to a topic and don't yet believe you know anything?

Hell if you don't think you have the knowledge or information to share, get it - start asking meaningful questions in the forums so that you can gain knowledge and information so that one day you may pass it along to someone else like yourself. Use the power of forums to enrich your life and someone else's - you may not always know it but I can guarantee it takes less effort to help someone in a meaningful way then it is try and glean something for free. And once you discover this, once you get past the dollars and cents, once you get past "I need this for me", then you will truly appreciate the power of forums and their impact on the human growth experience.

At least, that is what I have discovered. As always, YMMV.

All the best,

Rich

PS - if anyone cares to PM or ask me here me for support/feedback or suggestions on looking at themselves or ideas on how they can share knowledge I'd be more than willing to help them out as best I can.

patkins
17th August, 2010, 11:24 PM
Hello Rich.
We have all come to DK to get something. For me it was information on satellite scanning for which I received a wealth of information none of which appeared here by magic. All that detail was presented by people who were not of the grab and run brigade that is so prevalent in society today but people,like yourself, who having posted same were always around to elaborate further on this information or on experience gained. And this is what has made DK the popular site it is today.
I have gained many (cyber) friends here and enjoy many of the other unrelated to satellite forums and I try to doggedly come to grips with the motoring sections to keep my hand in an old trade of mine that has changed drastically since I departed it in 1975.
And you know what? I`m still here even though my interest in the skies has waned somewhat since I joined preferring now to be surfing the internet with an almost daily visit to my favorite site,Digital Kaos.

rdenis
19th August, 2010, 07:43 PM
Thanks Pat - that is exactly what I am talking about.