Interviewing San Diego: Brian Dear

Brian Dear, whose name I misspell ‘Brain’ more often than not, is our first in the Interviewing San Diego series. Brian has been involved with computing and online communications since 1979. He is a software/Internet entrepreneur interested in social networks, online communities and making computing personal and interpersonal. He is currently writing a book about the history of the pioneering online community PLATO. His prior work experience covers names like eBay, Eazel (Linux), Mp3.com, Flatworks, Progressive Networks (RealNetworks) and Coconut Computing, Inc. He was mentioned on San Diego Blog previously when he had a month’s worth of posts reprinted by The Reader.

What’s your Blog Birthday:

I run five blogs, so, let’s see:

brianstorms.com blog: 2/1/2002
nettle.com blog: first launched 6/1/1997 for a couple months, then relaunched 8/1/2002
platopeople.com “what’s new” blog: first launched 1997
coconut.com blog: 7/29/2003
wnotw.com blog: 4/13/2002

Why do you blog?

Before I just jotted stuff down on pieces of paper. This is my effort to go paperless. Whoda thunk it would turn out that there are people who wanna read this stuff…

What do you talk about?

Ideas for new products/services, random everyday observations, random thoughts, links to things I found amusing or interesting.

What don’t you talk about? Why?

I don’t do a personal journal (“woke up today, still had hangover”) like some people do; just not interested in that, it’d be too boring (for me as well as the reader).

Worst/best experiences regarding something you wrote in your blog?

Worst? I don’t know, I guess waking up one day and finding 250 spam messages embedded in comments throughout brianstorms.com…. that was a real pain to clean up. Best experiences so far: (1) brianstorms.com being prominently written up in The Motley Fool, the article of which made it into Yahoo!Finance, driving incredible amounts of traffic for about a week; (2) in 2003, nettle.com took on the ACLU publicly and won (got them to change their membership practices), all thanks to the campaign run from the blog.

Favorite/worst thing about living in SD:

Favorite: climate, the ocean. Worst: Inconsiderate people

If you were president of the US:

I’d still blog.

What actor would play you in the movie of your life?

Wait, you mean this isn’t the movie of my life?

Favorite color:

They’re all fine w/ me.

Favorite food:

Chateaubriand with a bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, served at the Chateau Frontenac. Say ten times fast.

When you were 10, what did you want to do when you grew up?

Everything!

What are your hobbies?

Blogging.

What do you want to tell other bloggers?

Hi there!

Thanx, Brian!

Popularity: 16% [?]