Techie interview: Keith Dsouza admin of Techie-buzz.com

Keith Dsouza runs techie-buzz.com, a tech blog which shares useful information, articles, tips and tricks on various aspects of technology and softwares. He lived in Mumbai for 24 years of his life and now he’s in USA.

An interesting thing about Keith is that, he has broken up the routine education chain. He hasn’t attended college (by choice), as he says he knew what he had to do in his life (career) and college was a waste of time for him. And today he is a successful example to follow (not blindly!).

We had a very intense online interview with Keith. His answers, I am sure, will open new horizons for the bloggers. He has shared real advises, which I believe will be useful to every blogger. Read on.

Keith Dsouza

Speakbindas: Hello Keith, welcome to Speakbindas.com. Tell us what is techie-buzz.com all about? What topics it covers for blogging?

Keith Dsouza: When I started out with blogging I did it on my personal blog, however I realized that I wrote more about technology than anything else, out of my own needs and to keep my writing relevant I decided to go for something that was relevant to technology, that was how I came up with Techie Buzz. And that was almost 3 years ago, Techie Buzz will complete 3 years on the 6th of June.

For those who are looking to get to know what Techie Buzz means, it’s split up into two different terms Techie means a guy or a gal who is passionate about technology, not a geek but someone who can explain things with ease. Techie Buzz was eventually aimed at spreading and writing about technology in way other people who were not familiar would understand and adapt to, that is the reason I had the Know your technology head on byline.

As far as topics are concerned, we do cover a lot of things, however we are now diversified into three different niches, software/tutorials/tips and tricks/et al, mobiles and gadgets/hardware which run on separate blogs within the network.

Speakbindas: By profession you are a software engineer, but you differ from other software geeks in a way that you have not been to regular college for the education purpose. What made you chose the decision of staying away from colleges?

Keith Dsouza: Well education is a real must, however I did not feel it would really fulfill my aim or knowledge by attending college. I really was not the type of guy who would want to waste time learning something, that would practically be useless in future, instead of that I decided to build my future by learning myself.

However without education I could not have done it, you need some basic training to get started out on, it’s not that you will be a Einstein by attending college or by not attending it, you have to set clear goals on what you want to do, just saying that I will educate myself and do this and that or saying that college is a waste of time will never help.

The best approach in whatever you think is right to do is when you yourself have a clear goal and future in mind, if you think college is not helping you and you would do better otherwise, give it a try, never hesitate to give chance to something you want to do in life.

Speakbindas: And after all these years of being a successful software dude and a blogger, what’s your take on education provided by the colleges?

Keith Dsouza: As far as I have seen, its more of mugging and trying to do better than someone else, is what is on the top of everyone’s mind, students, parents, teachers and everyone else around are to blame for this, there is no real value being given to what one learns by learning, rather more value is given to what one can write in the exam, we are not really focusing on the practical way of using education.

Let me give you an example, while I was getting the basics done in computing at a reputed computer institute, there was a guy who was really smart, and many people including me were amazed by his knowledge, however it was because he really knew the whole book by heart, he scored the highest marks in the theory exam (about 90% or something, I was like 65% or something), however when the time came to submit a practical project, this guy was really clueless about how to start writing code and for that matter he even struggled writing a single line of code. I topped the practicals, with a best project prize and 97% rating for my project, not that I am bragging, but this is an example of where our education system is wrong, we put more onus on studying and mugging rather than doing things practically.

To state a fact I have interviewed several engineering students with better background in education than I have and rejected 99% of them, most of them don’t have any clue about how to work in a practical environment and come to interviews by mugging up questions.

Keith Dsouza

Speakbindas: What a tech blogger requires to have his / her blog a hit, providing enough stream of revenue, to quit a 10 to 6 job?

Keith Dsouza: There is no formula to be a hit or a flop, over time everyone grows to have enough stream of both traffic and revenue. I made $100 in total after a 14 months of blogging, however I never gave up.

Success cannot be attained overnight, it takes considerable efforts and patience to get there, however many people do not do that, blogging is not really about quitting your day job, blogging is not going to make you rich overnight or for that matter in a few months, I would rather advice people to not start blogging with either the aim of making money or a target of quitting their jobs. Get started first, keep writing, everything falls into place in time, don’t rush.

Speakbindas: As per the alexa rank (as on June 5, 2009), techie-buzz.com’s rank is 25,666 with total of 1520 inbound links. What are the driving forces for such high graph?

Keith Dsouza: I don’t trust or look at Alexa ranks, they are terribly bad at predicting traffic, what basis do they have for that data?

Speakbindas: Would you mind sharing the revenue figure you are generating through techie-buzz.com? It’s fine with us, if you give a hint on the figure. This might boost up the confidence of other tech bloggers, who are taking their first steps in the same genre?

Keith Dsouza: I do make a significant money from my blog and it’s good, let me say that it is almost half the salary I make in US, however I want to point out that it took me almost 3 years to get here, so don’t take shortcuts, don’t lose hope eventually you will start making money, but don’t start blogging with only the aim of making money.

Speakbindas: How much hard work it takes to run techie-buzz.com, by adding regular and useful articles, tips and tricks?

Keith Dsouza: It is really hard, considering that I have a full time job and write for several blogs, however I do take a lot of notes, which include links to nice softwares, articles, interesting news and more, eventually I spare some time and write up posts and publish them, but I do schedule at least 1 hour a day for the blog and more on the weekend, however that is never enough, I have around 400 notes I have taken and have to write articles on, eventually most of them will never see the light of day, but yes it does help, because if tomorrow if I have nothing to write about I will fall back on those notes.

Another thing I do is keep a separate notebook for original ideas and articles, most of the time these are ideas that pop up anywhere, so I write it down on a small notepad I carry with me everywhere, there are also quite a few pending articles there, but I tend to publish most of the original articles from my notes.

Speakbindas: Tell us about the softwares and other applications that you have created, which the people can use for free?

Keith Dsouza: I love writing open source code, most of them are WordPress plugins, the most famous one is WordPress Automatic Upgrade which allows users to upgrade their WordPress installation to the newest version, of course now WordPress has that built in, am working on another interesting plugin that should be very useful to users.

In addition to that I also develop twitter apps, one of them is twitlookup (http://twitlookup.com) it’s a twitter robot that lookups up useful information for users within twitter, including weather, dictionary and more, you can find many more projects from me at http://keithdsouza.com/projects.php, I have not listed all of them but yes looking at it you can find a idea of what I have done.

There are several more things I am working on, however time is the only factor I can’t control, something that may only take a few hours for me to code may eventually end up taking a couple of months, I practically have no time, so coding has been on a backburner for a while.

Speakbindas: What image you hold in your personal circle, i.e. friends and family?

Keith Dsouza: Well I would really not be able to answer this question for you, I honestly cannot tell you other’s opinions about me, it’s best for them to say.

Speakbindas: Where are you basically? Also tell us about the places you have traveled, and you loved.

Keith Dsouza: I am based in New York City/Jersey City for past 2 and half years, don’t know where I will be in next six months or one year, however I haven’t traveled much in India, but loved going to Orlando and San Francisco.

Speakbindas: Which are your favorite dishes to eat? Any dislikes?

Keith Dsouza: Being in US for a long time, I really like to eat Thai, Mexican, Japanese (prefer sushi) and Cuban, they are really good, every once in a while I go to eat Desi Chinese at a place called Chinese Mirch. Indian food here is so so. The worst thing I have eaten here is Chinese food (not desi Chinese), it’s really bad and toooooo sweet.

Speakbindas: What tips you would like to give to struggling bloggers?

Keith Dsouza: Please stop using phrases like that, blogging is not about working, there are no struggling bloggers, it’s all in the mind, I have had several bloggers blocks, where I practically did not write for months, however when I came back to write I was refreshed and ready to write. When I was not making money I was a little bit upset to be honest, but if I would really be struggling at it you would really not have me responding to this interview, would you?

Blogging is about having fun, not about struggling or whatever terms you relate to a full time job, of course if you take up full time blogging, it’s your choice and you have to cope with whatever comes across. Don’t treat blogging as a job unless it is your job, patience is the key, traffic and money cannot be made overnight or in few months time, it takes considerable efforts, taking shortcuts may give you success, but not fame.

I do plan to take up full time blogging in future, however I do have certain goals before I make that move, and I have been thinking about it for one year now, whatever said patience pays a big role in how you eventually get ahead.

Speakbindas: Any special message to techie-buzz.com’s fans and readers?

Keith Dsouza: Well all I would like to say is that it is the fans and readers who help keep Techie Buzz running, without their support I would not have had the urge to write, their support everyday is what I love the most, I am more into community building for the site and will be taking considerable measures for that in the future.

Other than that I hope all our readers and you enjoy coming back to Techie Buzz and knowing your technology head on. Cheers Keith