Blog Posting Number: 500

Today I reach posting number 500 of my blog. I started the blog on May 1, 2005 having thought about the format for some time. I was not going to talk about my cat (which we happily do not have) and not about my private life either as this is hardly exciting for anyone else. I took my daily work area content strategy as scope with the virtual watch tower of the curious house in the Biziaulane in Utrecht (the Netherlands; see photograph). I intended to write daily a blog on a subject in the area of content strategy and content-related technology; so far I have been able to deliver a posting every day (and on a few days even more than one posting). Another aspect of the format was to write the posting in English; I consider myself a man of the world rather than a Dutchman. Besides for subjects I can fall back on global issues and issues in the Dutch market; the best of two worlds.

It has been a nice learning curve so far. I have learned to work with the Blogger software, which has its advantages and disadvantages, I have learned to upload photographs. For the time being Blogger is okay, but I have started to list of options I would love to have. I see that other people using Blogger can do more than I can with the software. But I studied theology and can only produce simple scripts.

The last few months I have learned a lot about the readers of the blog Buziaulane. As you can see on the map in the left column, the newsletter is read throughout the world. This is not a real surprise as my network is global thanks to multimedia competitions like the Europrix Top Talent Award and the World Summit Award as well as my work in the European Academy of Digital Media (EADiM) and for the European Commission. But the statistical program onestat.com gave me more insight (I got it installed with the help of Annedien Hoen. The program tells me not only where on the map people live (I love the feature), but also about the network they use, the browser they have and the favourite pages.

Looking back at the 500 postings I look back at writing some mini-series with pleasure. The history of new media in the Netherlands was great to do. It was in fact a finger exercise for a larger project which should be published by next year. Also the mini-series on the history of electronic books and digital paper was a nice project. And do not forget testing the iLiad, which is still going on, was an exercise in its own right so far.

The blog has given me a lot of pleasure. As I do my desk research, I can turn one of the subjects into a blog. Before I started the blog I was involved in the Dutch newsletter Telecombrief. It was the first Dutch newsletter on new media and dealt with cable, videotext, optical media, new media policy and research. I started writing for the newsletter in 1981when the newsletter, just one year old, was called Media-Info. As such I was familiar with desk research, although it was quite different from news availability now. So when the publisher started slashing authors fee to unacceptable levels, I quit and started up my blog. The newsletter still exists, but only appears 16 times a year, while my postings are daily.

What about the future? For the time being I will continue writing a blog every day. And I have some plans to start a new type of blog. For this I still have to work out the format, fiddle with software and get a business plan going. It will be a mix of blog postings, press releases and article summaries in the field of content strategy and content related technology. I am still in doubt whether this will be in English or in Dutch or both.

Something I worry about is the preservation of the 500 issues. Yesterday I wrote a posting on the preservation of Dutch internet sites by the Dutch national library. And I got a mail from Cindy (see comments) who is also thinking about preservation. Sometime ago I heard from someone that he lost all his postings of more than two years. Can you imagine? All 500 postings gone, text and pictures. I am not saying that my postings are material for digital heritage, but I certainly would love to see them preserved for the time being by Blogger. Eventually I guess I will have a site with my blog my archive and particular software (but I guess that I keep the Blogger sub site as a special outlet).

I think I go for a champaign caviar breakfast today.

Tags: blog, preservation

Blog Posting Number: 500