Why blog?

With over 8 million blogs out there (as of March, when I saw Mena Trott, founder of blogging service Six Apart, speak at the NTEN Non-Profit Technology conference), there’s a real good question as to why someone like me would add another “sad, default-Blogger-templated website” to the giant heap of the same out there. Well, I have a few reasons.

Mainly, while most people set up blogs and then notice how conveniently they can distribute them via RSS (Really Simple Syndication), I got here from the reverse direction. I have a need to strategically publish content to a variety of web sites, and RSS is an effective tool to do it. By maintaining a blog, I can pretty handily write all of that content here and then selectively copy it where it needs to go. The destinations for these posts include www.krazy.com, my website devoted to the classic cartoon “Krazy Kat” and it’s author, George Herriman; a private web site inside San Francisco Goodwill that I maintain (running on Drupal), where I blog on technology issues relevant to my organization and role as IT Director; and, possibly, the Digital Divide Network, where I am hoping to be more active.

Secondly, I think I have enough web street cred to be legitimate. I wasn’t born on the web yesterday. In 1989, I ran a computerized Bulletin Board system (BBS) out of my home. I wrote software to convert Usenet newsgroups to PCBoard BBS format so I could carry them for my callers. I registered krazy.com in 1994, and had a web site up there by January of 1995, a little earlier than most of you, right? Since about 2000, you’ve been able to find my web site at Google by typing “krazy kat” in the box and pressing “I’m Feeling Lucky”. The Coconino County Homepage is the first unsponsored link at just about any search engine when you look for either “Krazy Kat” or “George Herriman”.

Third, I hope to grow this into more than just a blog. WordPress supports adding additional pages, and RSS feeds on related topics, as well as forums and other features are likely additions in the months to come. Ultimate goal: port the whole Krazy Kat web site to WordPress as well.

Finally, this is not a place where you’re going to hear cute stories about my dog, and I promise to keep the “blogging about blogs” itch scratched, as much as possible. I will discuss related technologies, but from my perspective as a technology strategist, which I think puts a broader slant on things then just “ain’t it cool”. I’ll also throw in some biographical/political/pure opinion stuff, but I’ll try to keep it entertaining.

So, again, welcome!