Blogging gaining respect in Vancouver
Business Week wrote, under the heading “The Business Of Blogging” (Dec 2004): “A new medium, though still a work in progress, is coming into being.“
When I wrote my first blog post (note: different domain than my current blog) - September 2, 2004 - a bit earlier than the Business Week article was published, blogging was still something “new” to many in the Vancouver business community. Now it seems to be gaining respect as a valuable tool.
Not that we have not had people around blogging for some time (Wikipedia suggest we go back to 1994) - I’m still a newbie in that sense - but the exposure blogging is currently getting in our local marketplace seem to me to indicate we are now past the early Introduction Life Cycle stage and are moving into Growth.
For example, Technorati’s Dave Sifry wrote in an October 17th post that Technorati is now tracking nearly 20 million weblogs and that this number seems to double every 5 months. He goes so far as to indicate they see 33,000 new posts every hour! Growth allright.
What do I mean when I say blogging is gaining respect in Vancouver? I’m suggesting this based on the number of events local marketing related organizations are doing on this subject at the moment.
I currently serve on the Board of Directors for the IIMA and left the Board of BCAIM earlier this summer. The frequency of blogging related events is higher than I’ve ever seen before and thus I conclude we’re at a new stage for blogging.
Instead of proving my point by showing both 2004 and 2005 data on blogging events, I’ll just show some of the events I have noticed over the last few weeks:
-BCAMA, October 12: Hyperfragmentation: The Rise of Personalized Media, presented by Rick Sanderson and Barbara Davidson of OMD Vancouver.
- HTCE/STC, October 15: Online Influence: What Blogs Mean to Your Business, presented by Susannah Gardner
- IIMA, November 28: Blogging 101 and November 30: Advanced Blogging, presented by Arieanna Foley and Tris Hussey
- BCAIM, December 1: Blogging Demystified, presented by Darren Barefoot.
- Banf New Media Institute, December 4-8: Blogs and Dogs
- Northern Voice, Feb 10-11 2006: Moose Camp and Blogging Conference
I’m sure there are others. In any case, it looks like growth and respect to me.
roar at roarweb dot com
Note: This post moved from Blogger December 6, 2005