mono

So, I finally gave in.

The inspiration has of course been all around the internet, and for quite some time now. Those who have followed the scene for the past few years have had the privilege of witnessing a true revolution in information, communication and publishing technologies.

It has been a thrill to watch all this, and in the process I have become a regular reader of about a dozen blogs (and an irregular reader of who knows how many). Considering the fact that blogs represent a publishing format that I was completely unaware of just a couple of years ago, this is quite remarkable.

I wanted to be a part of this. And, even more remarkably, I could. Almost instantly and at no cost.

Despite this, the decision to go live with a blog of my own was not an easy one to make.

On the one hand, the amount of work and talent that goes into some blogs, whether in writing, coding, or graphical design, has been overwhelming. At times, it has been extremely frustrating to consider the time and effort it would take to compete with such blogs. This is not to say that the overall feeling hasn’t been positive and inspiring. It has. The past few months in particular have seen one fantastic blog after another being released or redesigned, and the frequency with which this is happening seems to be increasing. I have to say that I welcome this development, and I’m still excited every time I’m about to follow a link to a new blog.

On the other hand, most blogs are a terrible waste of my time.

But there is hope, despite the frustration. We now see more quality and diversity among the top blogs, while the once dominant “meta” blogs - blogs commenting other blogs commenting other blogs - are slowly being pushed into page rank obscurity. In their place we see well written, sometimes co-authored, and often thoroughly researched and beautifully designed publications, coming from authors with a more diverse social, cultural and geographical background than ever before.

Moreover, these publications now cover a much wider range of topics, rank more appropriately in search engines, and reach a significantly greater audience than meta blogs or plain personal websites ever did.

With this in mind, I put a lot of thought into what I wanted this blog to be about, and what level of ambition I would set for myself, and what audience, if any, I should target. Knowing myself, I quickly realized that if I was to aim for any particular audience, in any particular area of expertize, then nothing less than the best would do. But competing in terms of quality of content and update frequency in areas already covered by high profile bloggers would be both impossible and pointless.

But as it turns out, there are options.

I realized this a little while ago, as I visited FC Now: The Fast Company Weblog for the first time. A technology and business oriented weblog! Then, just a few days ago I stumbled over a Kalsey Consulting Group post entitled Business blogs. I had been so buried in “geek” stuff, that I had completely missed or ignored the fact that blogs were appearing in many other areas.

This was exciting, to say the least.

For an illustration of this diversity, see for example:

• FC Now: The Fast Company Weblog - technology
• Column Two - technology
• Kandahar Chronicles - news
• VentureBlog - investment
• bBlog - sales, marketing, business
• Jupiter Research Analyst Weblogs - business
• Up2Speed: Business Weblogs - The Big List - business
• Blog for America - presidential campaign (US)
• AndrewSulliwan.com - politics (US)
• Airstrip One - politics (UK)
• Salam Pax - politics (Iraq)
• Blogcritics.org - entertainment
• William Gibson - the author

Yet the global demand for web-based news, reviews, and debate of real world issues in technology, business, politics, culture and entertainment is increasing.

At the same time, of course, a majority of qualitative blogs still cover various aspects of web design and development or other related technologies. While some of these will be up for tough competition to keep their existing readers, the real challenge will be for new blogs to find their way to an entirely new audience. Because there will be a demand (whether real or created is another discussion). People both inside and outside the web technology community will start to demand other types of content, but with the same quality and update frequency as those of the best web technology bloggers.

As a reflection of this trend, several influential real world publications have written about blogs, including The New York Times (several articles) and The Economist (to date: The revenge of geography, March 13th 2003; Golden blogs, August 14th 2003; The trees fight back, July 4th 2002, see also ebusinessforum.com). Blog coverage has even made its way to Associated Press. Judging from the outlook of these articles, we can expect further coverage in the near future, and, hopefully, more widespread knowledge of their potential.

Extending this analysis to my own case, it is clear that I should write about subjects I know well, or am interested in, but that haven’t been covered to any particular extent by other bloggers. These would include organizational theory and management issues, production systems and philosophies, industrial information and communication technologies (ICT), operations research, or, more specifically, the adoption and use of discrete-event simulation (DES) in the manufacturing industry.

So is this the direction this blog will take?

Probably not, although it might be too early to say. Seeing as the areas I mentioned above are both complex and difficult, a group (co-authored) blog would have a much bettter chance to succeed in finding a large and regular audience. More importantly though, I am not a writer. Good writing is without doubt the most important aspect of any weblog. Of course, good looks are important, either as a purely aesthetical benefit, a bonus that may help to attract readers, or as a decisive factor in determining a text’s readibility. But as strong as my passion is for good design, I have found that the blogs I most frequently read are those published by the most skilled authors. With few exceptions.

On the other hand, even a well written blog may only reach a small audience as long as a majority of its prospective readers are unfamiliar with or unaware of the blog format. There are ways around most of these obstacles, I think, but for now I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep.

But all grandiose plans aside, there are smaller values of a blog.

Regardless of ambitions or skills on behalf of the author, a blog is still unique in its role as a personal publishing platform. It allows you to organize your thoughts (as unimportant as they may be to anyone else), manage information and improve your writing and communication skills. At the click of a button. And there’s even more. In an essay entitled Weblogs: a history and perspective, Rebecca Blood describes it like this:

Shortly after I began producing Rebecca's Pocket I noticed two side effects I had not expected. First, I discovered my own interests. I thought I knew what I was interested in, but after linking stories for a few months I could see that I was much more interested in science, archaeology, and issues of injustice than I had realized. More importantly, I began to value more highly my own point of view. In composing my link text every day I carefully considered my own opinions and ideas, and I began to feel that my perspective was unique and important.

And through the power of the internet, all this happens in a way that is accessible 24/7 from virtually anywhere in the world, to me and almost anyone else in the world that belongs to the devastating minority of the world’s population that has access to the internet.

So even if this blog does not aspire to be revolutionary, that’s what it is to me.

And that is all that matters for now.