I am talking with Brett Callow of Brighthub. Brett is a self-employed technical consultant and writer, Director of Business Development with Knowledge Stairway (a company which provides specialized training solutions for technical recruiters) and who lives in self imposed exile in an extremely remote corner of Vancouver Island in a town where people are outnumbered by bears - well, almost.

Q1. Karla Bell: What is the purpose of Brighthub. Are you an information site aiming to inform the public about new scientific ides or are you a technology development site, or both?

A: Brett Callow

Let me answer that by quoting from Bright Hub’s website: “Bright Hub’s goal is simple: share knowledge about how the simplest scientific idea evolves into tomorrow’s technology. From advances in medicine to the construction of hybrid vehicles to the freedom of mobile computing — science and technology impacts our work, our play, our lives. With an expert writer network and an active community of life-long enthusiasts Bright Hub provides a level of technology transparency rarely seen in high tech. The team of writers and managing editors utilize deep domain expertise to focus on creating valuable information for both novice and advanced consumers. With a content inventory of thousands of science and technology articles, software and hardware reviews, buyer’s guides, blog entries and forum discussions, Bright Hub is able to provide readers with a dependable resource to make informative technology decisions.”

In addition to providing consumers with expert insight, Bright Hub also assists vendors by providing them with feedback through our reviews. For example, a well-know security company recently added some additional functionality to one of their beta products as a result of comments made by a Bright Hub reviewer.

Q2. K: Are you interested in facilitating project development or investment
in technologies.

A: Brett Callow

Neither. Bright Hub’s objective is to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and to enable writers to benefit from their contributions via the Shared Success Program which Bright Hub describe as follows: “The Shared Success Program is being introduced around the principle that empowerment economics

benefit everyone in the value chain. The network effect is powerful, leveraging each other’s strengths and learning while keeping standards high and building traffic together. Through a community of expert writers, a channel gains a strength gathered around the goal of helping users find information they are looking for through search engines within a particular science and technology discipline.”

Q3. K: Are you interested in facilitating investment in new technologies?

A: Brett Callow

Not directly. See above.

Q4. K: Do you track technology development over time?

A: Brett Callow

Yes, Bright Hub writers monitor their articles and update them whenever necessary.

Q5. K: Are you interested in Greenhouse reducing technologies as a focus or just part of the mix of technologies that you work on.

A: Brett Callow

While my primary focus on security matters, I am also the ME of Bright Hub’s Small Business Security channel.

I have become increasing interested in the subject of energy efficiency and my work in this area has led to, for example, an invitation to participate in the EU’s working group on the European Code of Conduct for data centres and to speak at ISPCON (neither of which I could do due to time constraints, unfortunately!). I also do some other odds and sods occasionally - for example, creating domains and content for the certification exams of an extremely well known software company.

Q6. K: Do your writers have free reign over the kinds of technologies within the major categories that they decide to write about?

A: Brett Callow

To a point. While the editorial calendars are set by the MEs, writers are always extremely welcome to suggest content ideas. And, of course, no writer is ever forced to take on an assignment! It’s worth noting too that our material is completely unbiased - we do not charge companies for product reviews and our writers are free to produce a complete honest assessment of a product.

Q7. K. How long has Brighthub been going?

A: Brett Callow

Bright Hub is relatively new and, in its current form, it has only been around since April of this year.

Q8. How do writers and technology companies contact you.

A: Brett Callow

That varies. Sometimes a writer will approach us; and sometimes we’ll approach a writer. And it’s similar when it comes to companies. Sometimes they’ll ask us to do a write up on a product; and sometimes we’ll ask them.

Tags: new technology, technology writers

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 at 6:42 pm and is filed under GHG Technologies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.