Having a web presence

The amount of time I want to contact someone in the technical field that I don’t know personally is not that often, but it surprises me when I can’t find their information. There are some guys out there that have technical blogs I enjoy reading, with no web site or contact details to speak of.
If the blog does not enable comments then there is no easy way of me to contact these guys.

I suppose there are a few level of anonymity:
No web presence: Does not know the net is ;)
No public web presence: No active blog, web site etc
Public and un-contactable: Possibly a blog or old posts on a mailing list archive with an invalid email address.
Public: Real details easily found. Usually these people also have an active blog or some sort of regular contact to the rest of the world.

Now I understand having a public profile takes effort. It can in fact be a hassle as you have a website or blog your have to maintain; you open yourself up to spam and other unwanted attention. However recently I have been meeting some very interesting and sometimes infamous people and I am genuinely surprised how many of them have
A) no really public presence such as a web site, a LinkedIn profile, Twitter account or even an active Blog
B) Or a web site that just sucks. I sometimes think none is better than crap, as Dad used to say “Do it properly or don’t do it all!”.

I do not consider my self a pioneer of the IT world nor someone that has any real public following, but was surprised how many people from the Alt.net community knew who I was (even if by my RhysC handle). If any of those guys wanted to find out details about me, I would like to think it would be pretty easy, and a few of them have. This is a good thing! I am a contractor! I want people to be able to find out about me, and when they do see my web site, I don’t want them to think. “Geee.. that sucks!”

So this is me laying it out, to you as a IT geek, sort it out! Especially if you are a contractor or a high profile senior IT employee. Get an online profile. Share with the world your thoughts. You didn’t get where you are by being a dumb ass, people may actually want to hear your thoughts, contact you, offer you a job… who knows 

NOTE: oh yeah, my UK company is FullStack
and the Aussie company i work with is ArtemisWest. AW does need a bit of polish, however we have had some big things happen in personal lives so work goes on the back burner... we work to live, not the other way around!