Happy Birthday: Technosailor 2 years on - Part II

Tomorrow is my two year blogging birthday here at Technosailor and earlier I started commemorating the last year and where we’ve been. I’d like to continue that now.

During September of last year, I was gone for most of the month in Mississippi helping my company in cleanup efforts there. It was a tremendously rewarding time and I made new friends with coworkers I had never met. To this day, some of them read this blog.

After splitting with my wife in August, I started taking inventory of my life and I realized how I didn’t want things to end the way they did. On October 7, our anniversary, I posted an Open Letter to her which turned out to be the beginning of a long process of rebuilding that culminated with her moving hom at the end of March. You can read the letter here.

October 18th saw Technosailor join the Bluefish Network of blogs. This was short-lived as I stepped back as my part in b5media became more pronounced. Andy Merrett, the founder, is someone I have utmost respect for and he continues to be a reader of this blog and other places that I write (not because of me but because we circle in the same kind of groups).

On November 4, my political edge hardened as I came out hard conservative but clarifying my claim that Republican was not the same as Conservative and that I was a Conservative, with Conservative value and principles, not a party-line Republican. This stance has carried over to The Not So Free State where I have move all of my political blogging to.

A few days later I began interacting more with well-known bloggers more and in person when possible. I had dinner with Jeremy Wright and Stowe Boyd in NYC.

On November 16 I got bitchy about the Pajama Orgy going on about Pajamas Media.

On November 22, I released the Textpattern-to-WordPress importer that has since been included in the WordPress core. Ironically, folks still look for support on this thread without using the importer as included in the source code today. Ah well.

Following right on the heels of the Textpattern importer, I had my first inside introduction to b5media where I was contracted to manage the migration of the About Weblogs network into b5media.  The trick was that they were running Nucleus CMS and b5media was running WordPress and that introduced a load of complications.  The last of the AW weblogs was finally
moved this past week.

Around the same time was when I began experimenting with monetizing this site. I started placing some advertisements around the site haphazardly not really knowing or understanding how to do so effectively.

THEN, on December 21st I crossed with my fellow conservatives by calling for the impeachment of President Bush based on the NSA wiretapping scandal. I still feel strongly and continue to blog about this topic on The Not So Free State.

But that wasn’t before launching the Open Mic Friday feature that gave readers the opportunity to participate and guest write, opine or meddle in the topics I choose to discuss.

On December 26th, Darren Rowse published the first entry I guest wrote for someone else entitle Top 10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.0.  It coincided with the launch of WordPress 2.0 and hit the Digg front page.  Too bad that article wasn’t here. I wrote about it though.

December also saw the launch of Emerging Earth, my first b5media blog.  The goal was to write a blog that would cover all the various products and technologies released by Google, Yahoo and MSN but has since transformed into a general Web 2.0 opinionscape.

When the new year began, I had set about some goals including diversifying Technosailor. My goals for the new year were to methodically spin off my various topics covered here to other blogs - blogs that could become niche blogs on their own and that would earn more revenue apart than they would together. The first such step was to launch The Not So Free State which was an experiment in political blogging. It focused on Maryland politics but recently became the main home of all the political bloggin I do on the Maryland and Federal level.

On February 5th, I posted an entry resigning from Bluefish Network because of my role at b5media.  This was not forced on either side but is also the reason why I fought myself not to apply for the 9rules Round IV submission round the other day. Unlike Andy and the Bluefish gang, I believe my involvement with b5media would have caused unneccessary friction between myself and Scrivs, Rundle and company. Better to keep everyone professional than to join something that would end up being much more political than necessary. Besides, I’m doing pretty damn okay independantly.

On February 9th, I started job hunting.  My reasons I outlined further as time went on and had some interesting results as a result of my writing.

I also took a shot at silicon valley bloggers in a Tale of Three Bloggers, still one of my favorite entries I’ve written of all time.  It didn’t get the attention I had hoped it would, but I’m still proud of it.

I passed 1000 blog entries on March 2nd. That was a big day.

And on March 9th, I began regulalry contributing a weekly column at Problogger. This has been the largest boost to my profile to date. Many, many of my current reader base came from ProBlogger.  Thank you, guys!

I started a 5 part series (that was actually an article I had written3 or 4 years ago) on moderating online forums.  That started on March 13.

March 31st I posted an article that got picked up by Steve Rubel and many, many others across the blogosphere noting that Technorati had begun indexing MySpace blogs. Fascinating lesson in viral marketing.

On April 19th, I won a trip to Mexico thanks to this and my other blogs and Qumana, and on April 28th I began videoblogging over at Squib Kick.

May 10th saw a photoshopped image I doctored of Albert Pujols swinging a pink bat land over at Gawker Media and I posted a very in depth assessment of The Blog Herald Sale 3 months late on May 17th.

Thanks for being nostalgic with me for a moment.  It’s been a great two years. Now I’m going to sit back and relax for the weekend and take my son to an airshow.

There’s much in the future. A possibility of b5media being funded. That would mean an end to this drudgery of a work existence as I’ve already been tentatively offered a full time position should our wishes become true and who really knows the potential that would follow. More blogging. More profile. This is just the start.

Thank you to all the readers who continue to build up as a base here. Obviously, this is not all about me. I would have thrown in the towel already if it wasn’t for the day to day interactions and the give and take here. I think we all get heated (less now that the politics has moved) and I’m just amazed that you really give a damn about what I have to say. But it thrills me to no end. Thanks for another year.

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About the Author: Aaron Brazell is the lead editor of Technosailor.com and a social media expert. His passion is to see companies and individuals use the internet and web technologies wisely and effectively to promote their brands and companies. He is Business Development Manager for Lijit and he worked as Director of Technology at b5media from 2005-2008 and is currently an independent consultant.