I almost forgot and let the week go by without thinking about it. It’s an important milestone for me. Actually this week marks two anniversaries of sorts. First it was 4 months ago this week that I broke my leg in Bolivia and had to be Medivad’d back to the states for surgery. More on how my recovery is coming along is here.
The second anniversary is that of The Digital Tavern – the blog I started on May 16, 2002. Ah, the good old days when the word blog still had a couple years before it would seep into the nomenclature of pop culture and still more than three years before nearly every major newspaper would have its own “blogs”. It was arguably then Vermont governor Howard Dean who jolted blogging into the mainstream. Dean’s failed 2004 presidential bid was marked by the successful use of the internet and his Blog For America / Democracy For America blog as a grass roots fundraising campaign. While on the campaign trail Dean frequently blogged about his experiences and efforts to “take back America.” By the time the presidential primary race was running full steam virtually every candidate had some sort of blog. And back then I ranted a bit about how perhaps it was time to lose the word “blog”.
But that’s ancient history. Today blogging is taken serious and many bloggers are credited with breaking news stories, exposing corporate and political wrong-doing and for raising awareness on both sides of virtually every issue. Sure blogging has also become the next-millennium teenage diary for teenage girls and the the success of pseudo-blogging platform MySpace has taken the place of underground radio and Rolling Stone Magazine as a way for musical artists to break new music to fans worldwide.
In 2003 I reflected about the artistry of blogging and why blog. It’s interesting to read these three years later.
So rather than write another post about why blogging and what’s it for, I invite you to take a trip back and re-read some of those old posts that I’ve linked to on this page. Meanwhile, I’ve been four years blogging and four years using what back then was the premier and arguably “first” blogging platform Radio. Today Radio is a fraction of what it used to be and while I’ve complained and lamented the possibility of moving to something new, I’ve actually started making progress. For those of you who know my WorldRider blog you’ll remember I chose not to use Radio but went with Movable Type and host the blog myself. Migrating The Digital Tavern to a new platform is taking a lot of work. I’m not done yet, but some of the links here do point to my “work in progress” new home for the tavern on a WordPress blog. Later I’ll “blog” about the whole experience.
Till then Happy Birthday/Anniversary to The Digital Tavern. Thanks for stopping by!
