Dot Blog
As I continue to work on my project to restore, migrate, and consolidate two decades of blogging into one, permanent place, I keep coming across random things—or more likely thinking to look for particular things.
Today’s tidbit is the pitch I sent to Knock Knock WHOIS There (the subsidiary of Automattic which operates the .blog TLD) to obtain this blog’s domain as part of their “dotblogger” program. I sent this in the fall of 2019 in response to a request to “explain in detail what your plans are for the domain”.
As intimated in my original inquiry, my interest relates to my return to the sort of steady, daily blogging I engaged in during the golden age of the late 90s and early 00s, when among other things I managed a “gang blog” to discuss David Weinberger’s seminal book Small Pieces, Loosely Joined (Weinberger was part of that blog), and eventually went on to write Portland Communique, an early example of stand-alone political journalism that was widely read in local government and media circles, and which was cited in the books The Power of Many and Blogwars.
Over the years (or, I guess, decades now), while never a general-interest “influencer” (a term I loathe), I’ve been niche-prominent in whatever interest phase I’d been in: whether my mid-90s internet activism which inspired the Center for Democracy and Technology’s petition against the Communications Decency Act, which landed me in Rolling Stone, or operating a popular Internet cafe in the late 90s, or my founding of what for years become a central fundraising charity in Joss Whedon fandom, or more recently project managing a popular and press-adored local animal-related nonprofit for five years. Networks of people from all these phases of my life and work continue to follow me on social, et cetera.
I blogged throughout, although little of it still online as I’ve gone through several, let’s say, identity crises both online and off (no doubt in part due to my undiagnosed autism). After my autism diagnosis, I did start writing on Medium, but as much as I love aspects of Medium (and as much as I still get regular traffic and highlights and applause for my material over there) it’s too closed off.
I started on the open web, and the open web, especially with its resurgence, is where I want to be. As I settle back into blogging like it’s 1999, and do so as part of the increasing IndieWeb movement (my platform of choice right now is a project called WriteFreely), I want to stake my place as simply and directly as possible.
To wit: my name is Bix, and I blog.
My blogging has been up and down (in terms of both frequency and whether or not it’s even online) in the years since then, but with the blog restoration project underway, I’m confident that it will all the more align with their goals for the program.