Today is My 20-Year Blogging Anniversary…

Today is a big day for me. Not that you have to care, but it’s something that I can proudly take to the grave because not too many people can say that they’ve blogged for two decades.

Back when I started, I never imagined that “blogging” would have staying power. Much less that I would be one of the very few that would stick with it from among the handful of pioneers that started out back in that dawning era.

When I started blogging, I had launched my first website – RealCorporateLawyer.com – for RR Donnelley just a year earlier. I was reading a marketing magazine and it included an esoteric article about something called “blogging.” And I thought to myself, “who would want to read my diary?” I wouldn’t want to read my own diary.

Because that’s how the article pitched the concept, that the blogger would essentially use the software to give periodic updates about one’s own life. Back when I started in 2002, there were only a handful of blogs out there – and perhaps no other lawyer blogging about the law (although there were a couple of blogs about legal marketing). The term “blog” didn’t exist in our everyday vernacular. It was a nascent concept.

So after I put down the magazine, I conducted some online research – probably using “Ask Jeeves” or “Dogpile”; not even Google – and downloaded the blogging software. A college kid worked for me as an intern – and it took him two weeks to install and get the blogging software working properly. It wasn’t a turnkey process like it is today.

My writing style for the first few months – and years – of blogging were quite rudimentary. I had no examples to look to as for what might work best. The blogging software didn’t suggest that your entry have a title. It really was software for a diary.

Here’s what that first month of blogging looked like – Sarbanes-Oxley was just coming down the pike so my foray into quasi-journalism was timely. Here’s to twenty more years. Cheers!