Moving Experiences - or the electronic me celebrates its first birthday

Time flies, it is today 1 year since I was born electronically and I feel I have learnt as much as a baby does in its first year. The site has undergone some major modifications. A timeline was added on the main page and flash timeline of my moving trail was added. We added improved category management and finally in December the family section was modified to add Maud.

I thought I would reflect a bit on my blogging experience so far:

* The blog is a good electronic representation of me, I feel it serves its purpose. I am happy with its scope and design. I get more out of my blog than I put in.

* Blogging is more labour intensive than I thought. This is due to two reasons, quality content needs quality time and blogs are expected to be fed regularely. I spend about 2-3 hours on more serious posts, this could easibly be extended to 5-6 hours, but that is too ambitious for me. With two small children and a more than fulltime job the frequency of serious post is lower than what I thought I would write.

* People read my blog more than expected. I average about 400 page views a day, lately doubled that of the first half.

* The blog allows me to reconnect with people from my past. A blog is so approachable and Google makes it very visible.

* I have met new people through my blog. People come up to me and say I read your blog. It feels good, as it lowers the barrier of social interaction, when people first meet. When I met Om Malik for the first time, he said "I read your blog, but I do not agree with everything you write." It immidiately allowed us to connect on a totally different level, deeper somehow.

* Mobile blogging is surprisingly unintrusive and the timeline asset I create gets more interesting with every post. It takes no more time to make a blog post than it takes to write an sms and it is much richer, of course also less personal.

* Blogging about my family stuff is still something I do not like to do, yet my family is regular visitors. I have created a private blog for sharing among the family and close friends.

* I am positively surprised how visible my food post have become. Many people have thanked me for restaurant recommendations.

* I am almost always blogging just before bedtime, it seems to be the only time when it is quiet enough.