eighteen years of blogging

Today marks 18 years of blogging here. My first post in 2004 was quite short, just stating what I was interested in discussing on my web log. One year later I wrote about the benefits of blogging:

• Using a feed reader (via RSS), saves a lot of time and bookmarking.
• The information I get from bloggers is usually weeks ahead of the mainstream press. Call this competitive intelligence.
• By blogging, I have raised my profile on the web and increased visits to my site by a factor of 1000 in less than one year. This is cheap marketing.
• I use my database of posts when preparing reports, proposals, and presentations. It helps to have a searchable system.
• Blogging forces me to think and reflect in order to write, so that what was just an idea in my mind becomes more concrete.
• The underlying technology of easy posting and RSS to keep track of things, makes a lot of sense for collaborative learning and collaborative work — two areas of interest for my business.
• Through blogging, I have met a number of business partners.
• Blogging keeps me in touch with a lot of interesting people and expands my view of the world, providing new ideas for my business.
• When I have a problem, especially a technical one, I post it on my site or someone else’s and usually get an informed answer within 24 hours. It’s like a large performance support system.
• It allows people to get to know my opinions before they engage me as a consultant — saving time and potential frustrations.

By 2006 I noted that all of my projects to date had been referrals and I believed that this was partly due to my blog.  In 2007 I wrote that I could not imagine stopping this blog, as it had been been a wonderful way to take my half-baked ideas and get some great input from a worldwide community. By the 5th anniversary I had taken up ‘micro-blogging’ on Twitter which was enabling different kinds of conversations — what might have been a few comments on this blog became several 140-character tweets. However my blog remained central to my Web presence.

I later noticed that the day I started blogging — 19 February 2004 — states of emergency had been declared in Nova Scotia [8 km from here] and PEI [60 km to the bridge that connects the island] after a prolonged blizzard, later named White Juan, dumped as much as 95 centimetres of snow.  Many roads were impassable, blocked with snow drifts of up to 4 metres.

By 2014, after 10 years of blogging, I had written over 2,500 posts. That year I wrote an e-book that synthesized these posts into a coherent narrative and published Seeking Perpetual Beta, the first of the perpetual beta series, with the latest addition,  Perpetual Beta 2022 published last month.

In my lucky 13th year I published several more observations I had made about blogging — From 2011: I have tried to keep this blog true to my principles and beliefs but still professional and courteous. I cannot say the posts here have a neutral point of view. I was an advocate of open source software before it was popular with the mainstream. I have commented on oligopolistic practice, suggested that the LMS is not the centre of the universe and have advocated for de-schooling. While not radical, this blog has not been corporate mainstream either. Of course, there is always a price to pay for that, as I continue to learn. However, I cannot see how I could remove myself from my online life. For instance, I never comment online under a pseudonym. My writing reflects me and nobody else, though I try to be restrained and provide balance.

After 18 years I am writing less frequently, averaging one or two posts per week. I think part of the reason is that I have covered a lot of ground with 3,500 posts to date. One post I wrote this year was at the request of a reader who shared several of my posts on Twitter and mentioned that it would be nice to find most of my writing on the topic of curiosity in one place. So I wrote — sparking curiosity. I intend to keep on blogging and find new rhythms as time goes on. If you find my blogging of use, you might want to buy the latest perpetual beta e-book.