Guillaume Paumier's weblog

Golden Gate Bridge, Rodefeld, CC-by

The last couple of weeks have been quite busy for me. I moved from Toulouse, France, to San Francisco, California as a consequence of my hiring by the Wikimedia Foundation (the non-profit that runs Wikipedia) where I work as Product Manager for Multimedia Usability.

I just got my Internet connection at home set up, so you should see more regular blog articles now. I have a few drafts in the works and a lot of updates to post related to my work at the Foundation. In the meantime, I invite you to read the summary published today on the Wikimedia blog.

Dear blogger,

I assume that you write your weblog in order to be read. The more people read your work, the further your ideas travel and the more impact you have. At least, it’s how it works for me.

Like many other readers of yours, I use RSS feeds to stay informed of new articles you publish. I collect RSS feeds from many websites into a desktop application that sorts them by topic.

I happen to travel a lot these days, which means I have scarce Internet connection. As a consequence, I update my RSS feeds when I can and read them offline later, for example in the train I am right now.

The problem is that your RSS feed only contains the first three lines of your article. Sometimes, it even cuts  a sentence in the middle. In order to read the full article, I have to visit your website, because somewhere in your blog’s configuration, you disabled a setting allowing the full article to be included in your RSS feed.

Please don’t do that.

Don’t force me to read your work online on your blog. It’s annoying. It’s rude. It frustrates me.

I want to be able to read your work wherever I am, whenever I want, even if I don’t have an Internet connection. I am really interested in what you have to say; I value your ideas, your insights, your sense of humor; I enjoy reading your prose.

Dear blogger, if you care about your readers as much as they care about what you have to say, please make it easier for them to read your work. Not more difficult.

Thank you.

Last week-end, I was in Essen, Germany for the digiKam / KDE imaging coding spring. I came back to Toulouse yesterday, but the trip did not go exactly according to the plan.

I managed to get to the Düsseldorf International airport without any problems. Our host had provided me with all the information I needed to get there by bus & regional train from the hotel. I arrived early at the airport and worked while waiting for check-in. I had to take a first plane to Frankfurt, then another one to Toulouse.

When I arrived at the gate in order to board, the screens indicated a 20-minute delay: the plane was planned to take off at 15:00 instead of 14:40. That was not much of an issue, since I had more than an hour to connect in Frankfurt. However, as soon as everybody was seated in the plane, the real fun began.

The captain announced that many air traffic controllers had not shown up on Monday morning; he said they might have called in sick because of the swine flu. As a consequence, a lot of delay had been accumulated and our plane had lost its flight slot. The next slot was 2 hours later.  The captain managed to get an earlier slot at 16:00.

The problem then was to be able to land in Frankfurt. He called the controllers there and managed to get a landing slot. After leaving Düsseldorf, the crew spent most of their time trying to get information about connecting flights, and pass it along to the passengers. The flight attendant told me I would probably not be able to catch my next flight. We eventually landed in Frankfurt at 16:45, even though the captain had to convince the airport staff to let us use a parking slot that was not completely opposite from the terminal.

For one moment, I really thought I would spend the night in Frankfurt. Fortunately (for me), the delays in Düsseldorf had caused some delays in Frankfurt as well; my plane to Toulouse, which was supposed to take off at 16:40, was delayed to 17:20, so I was able to catch it. We eventually left at 17:40 and landed in Toulouse around 19:20. I was glad to be finally home.

My luggage, however, decided that Frankfurt was worth a few more hours of sightseeing, and did not take the same plane as me. It arrived later in the night and was delivered today.

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