Blogging about cancer: The “Killer App”

Software exec finds inspiration in candidly talking about his cancer journey

As far as high-tech company president Jeffrey Walker is concerned, you can’t get too personal when you’re blogging from a public position as a corporate executive.

“I’ve found that a lot of the rules of blogging are not necessarily valid,” says Walker, president of Atlassian, a software company based in San Francisco and Sydney, Australia. He’s talking about the common conventions that call for posting to a blog frequently, and being pithy and punchy.

Instead, Walker only posts once about every three to four weeks on his blog Radiowalker, and he tends to write long—and gets very personal. In summer 2007, Walker started blogging about his second bout with a rare cancer. In a post titled, “Cancer 2.0: The Killer App,” Walker recounted his previous battle with the disease, and what he would face during the second round. (The cancer has never been specifically identified by doctors and is technically termed an “unknown cancer.”)