The total number of visitors to my Nickpoint blog has been on the rise again for the last two months. previously the number of visitors have reached a plateau. Thank you to all my readers for following my blog writings. I must be bringing some value to the conversation.
It saddens me to bring the news that Jeffrey Walker aka Cancer Dude has lost his final battle against cancer. Jeffrey was my blogging inspiration and mentor. His RadioWalker blog images, humor and personal approach has greatly inspired my blog writing. In many ways he was my blogging Godfather.
Jeffrey jamming
Simon, my co-founder, and I met Jeffrey in June 2008 at The Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston, USA. Even before then Jeffrey commented on my blog. Jeffrey warmly welcomed Simon and I to the Enterprise 2.0 community. In January 2009 when I started to loose the blogging faith and reflected on my first years blogging Jeffrey responded. He said “Be yourself. Let your personality through. Oh, and keep the images. And keep the faith, dude.”
Earlier this year when I heard Jeffrey’s cancer was back for the third time I wrote one of my favorite posts on fear, uncertainty and doubt. Within this post I refer to Jeffrey’s latest battle against cancer. Again, Jeffrey commented so nicely saying “Thanks for the kind thoughts. I really appreciate it. I am doing well.”
I did not know Jeffrey particularly well, however I consider him a friend. I found him a very kind, fun loving and passionate man. Jeffrey had a thirst for life and living. When I interviewed Jeffrey last year I saw a man who enjoyed every little experience and everything he saw. Life is so short. Jeffrey’s death is a reminder to us all on how brief our lives are and how we can live our lives. We can choose to live like Jeffrey with “zest and passion” as his family said.
Jeffrey’s last words to me were “Live Strong”. It seems to me that Jeffrey burned so very brightly and its always better to burn brightly than fade away.
So-long Cancer Dude!!
I was going to wait until next week to write about Economics in a planned and structured fashion, however I have had ‘a moment of clarity‘ thanks to you. Economics you say, well how dull or perhaps how exciting. The Economics will have to wait until another day. The shocking thing is what you guys are doing on a Easter Bank holiday reading blogs and my need to blog immediately. Here’s the proof of the number of blog reads on my site for the last week with a relative high number at the weekend:
My point is that the new social way of behaviour on the Internet is very open and instant. This is me, here is my career, here are my colleagues, here are my friends, here is my family, here is my diary..here is what I think. And here is a graphical measure of how interested other people are in us and what we are doing. The next version of the Internet (so called Web2.0) is an expression of the self and then active participation in a community. By participating we become involved, by being involved we are drawn into participating further, thus me writing and you reading during our holiday.
A reoccurring question over the last week has been why blog? Afterall, we all have day jobs and any spare time is precious. With 70million worldwide blogs is it now something we need to been seen doing or is it expected of us if you work in certain industries? Things seem to be moving in that direction. They (bloggers) say it ‘s fun and it can be addictive but there are already too many fun things to do on the Internet with communities, auctioning, sharing photo’s, buying stuff. The list goes on and on. So, much fun with so little free time (and money!). One of my co-founders friend’s refers to Facebook as an ‘excellent wast of time’, perhaps blogging can also easily be this.
In my search I have discovered many blogs which have ran out of steam or ones which ramble on and on about not very much. Look I have this new thing-a-me..here I am with a whats-a-name… look how clever I am, etc. You decide which or if I fall into any of these categories. The real benefit of blogging is that you can build stronger direct and personal relationships with important target groups and that sounds very useful indeed. These target groups include family, community, not-for-profit , or business. I run a start-up so where our time is spent is a matter of life or death (for the business, of course) and blogging can help the business with:
A standard phase we are using ever more reguarly in our start-up is ‘What is the alternative’and in relation to the above points, how else can we achieve these actions? It occurs to me that alternative methods are difficult and expensive and blogging is relatively easy and cheap, however to be effective it needs to be read, and read by alot of people. 100,000 per day is a good target, as you can image I am not quite there yet but with your help…So what is going to get people reading, particularly a target of business people? People like you. Looking at the Times Top 50 blogs from my last post they seem to be lighthearted, informative, humorous, thought provoking and even controversial. Oh, well back to the drawing board. Until next time..
With the changing face of media it seems there are opportunities for us all in this brave new world of social web media. Rhys Blakely of The Times Online did a piece last year on the ‘bloggerati’ quoting the 50 best global blogs showing the power of blogging across a wide range of industries. I particularly liked the fake ‘Secret Diary of Steve Jobs’ blog and even Steve likes it apparently, oh he does have an ego. My business Co-Founder Simon Oxley and I meet Six Apart at CEBIT last week and they are seeing strong product growth of their company blogging platform, perhaps we are all going to be blogging soon? Lets not talk, lets blog! Technorati monitors the Blogosphere which is currently at 70million blogs worldwide and seems set to grow. Can anyone hear me, hello?
But is there a place for Blogging within firms and organisations, so we can blog at home and work? Some of the IT superpowers including Big Blue and the monster from Redmond seem to think so, with 1000′s of active internal bloggers. It’s all new to me! No more one to one meetings, it’s all in the the blog diary. Anyway if marketing and technology Innovation isn’t your thing read no more, however, if you are a bit interested in these read on. All things being equal and if we both get on I intend to post regular(ish). If you don’t know me more details are over to the right. Thanks you for reading (if you’ve reached the end).
