“This side of town . . . ” is one year old today.
Yup, that’s right. I’ve been blogging for a full year. Dane101, Shane Wealti and Kristian Knutson and others got me started. I dabbled with the madison.com site for a while, but the forum took too much time and I just felt icky contributing to the Wisconsin State Journal site. My own blog, here, started one year ago when I wanted a place to record my lobbyist contacts, but I only kept that up for a few months. I’ve posted over 200 posts, about 20,000 people have visited my site (according to sitemeter) and they’ve read my posts over 40,000 times. I also managed to start two other blogs, one for Inclusionary Zoning and one for the residents of the district I represent on the City of Madison City Council in district 2.
I know many folks don’t understand why I do this. Or where I find the time. And truth of the matter is, sometimes I don’t find the time. But generally speaking, I have found it to be worth my effort to provide information to the public and to have a forum to say what I want to say.
I know some folks don’t like it when I blow off steam and get a little snarky. Apparently, they forgot to give the me the elected officials where it says we’re not allowed to be snarky. Either that, or I’m not good at following the rules.
Beyond the snark, I also have heard a ton of positive feedback about many of my blogs that provide information to the public. My Inclusionary Zoning blog was very popular for those who were interested and I was able to provide information quicker than they could get it from the City. My recent blogs on the City budget were also very popular because the information was not available in other places. This blog provides a good venue to point back to when people ask me many of the same questions, I don’t need to repeat myself.
So, some good, some bad, but generally worth my time and effort.
Sorry about the brief hiatus I’ve taken for the past two weeks, I had vacation from work and spent some time doing a ton of personal chores around the house, but next week, I’ll be back to work and back at plan commission, common council and a ton of other meetings and plenty of blogging to catch up on. So keep checking in, and I’ll keep blogging.
