commitment

It’s possible that the data stream that seems so frantic now, with all the information flying into readers and emails, it seems possible that it will bloom a hundred fold in the coming decades.  It’s kind of a scary thought.  How will we manage effectively?

My story here is all recent, all still the story of a start up.  When I entered this space I was pretty timid.  I had less than 100 followers on twitter for two months, and my blogging, which starting over at Blogger, was a solitary affair.

I recognized the potential on these emerging technologies from a publishing standpoint and decided to find a way to get a foot hold.  The motivation was two fold.  At work, knowledge of these tools was lacking, and I’ve always had a literary part of myself that emerges now and then, surveys my grasp and capability, and to this point, tending to recede.

Well, it seems like I’ve broken through my own psychological resistance. All the start up goals that were mapped back in September when I attended Chris Brogan’s New Marketing Boot Camp have been achieved.

Much of my strategy has been built around three tools: this blog, my twitter network and google reader.  On the secondary level, backtype and friendfeed aggregate my activity with amazing results.  All the other tools are useful, but I do not really engage with them as a practice.

What I didn’t really expect was that all of you would be here to share this with me.  I was thinking publishing, not community.  Watching and participating, especially over at Liz Strauss’ blog, changed that.  It’s an amazing surprise to interact and engage, to share and lament, and to support one another as we make our separate ways in this journey of discovery.

So moving forward, I need to establish some new priorities.

• I need to learn how to filter better, finding ways to gather the information that I need, while not getting distracted by the interesting but personally irrelevant stuff.
• I need to learn how to use keywords effectively, so that organic search can lead people to the blog that might not find it otherwise.  Currently less than 3% of visitors come here that way.
• I need to settle into rhythm with these tools that doesn’t get caught up felling everything is passing me by.  For that I’ll count on all of you to send me a heads up once and awhile.
• I need to spend more time reading off line so that I can improve the content of what I share here.
• Finally, I need to say thank you for being a part, the main part, of this journey.  It’s been both an honor and a privilege to engage with so many of you.

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