Tuesday 4 January 2011

Inconsequential people

Job titles are funny things. Today, someone has told me that they assumed I was on the GIS team, someone else has asked me if I know @marcschmid and what my relationship is like with Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council.

Other people have done funky stats reviews on their blogs. So I'm going to do the same, but before I do, let me make something abundantly clear. I am a Multi Media Communications Officer who works for Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council. I am 33 years old. I am female. And I am invisible. We'll come to the invisible bit later.

The first post on this blog was made on 12th February 2009. But there was a huge gap between that and the next one and so, we really should say that this blog started almost exactly a year later on 20th February 2010.

There are 76 posts on this blog, across 10 months, which averages at about 7.6 posts per month or roughly 2 posts a week. Not prolific but certainly someone who has something to say and possibly says way too much.

All the following information only applies from May 2010 to date as it took me that long to work out how to install the stats.

Total page views for this blog are 21,285. Average views per post works out to be roughly 200-300 depending on how niche the content is.

Top 3 posts were:

A little bird tweeting
13 Nov 2010, 18 comments 6, 435 Pageviews
BWD winter - one Council, two people, a lot of det...
29 Nov 2010, 10 comments 1,799 Pageviews
Some random Twitter 'rules'
2 Jan 2011, 10 comments 898 Pageviews

A total of 219 comments have been left on the blog. Every single one has been read and most have been replied back to. Visitors to this blog are mostly referred here via Twitter, although there are some slightly more interesting referrers in the form of  favstar.fm and iconfactory.com - interesting because I haven't paid for advertising anywhere. In fact I haven't publicised this blog in any way at all, except through Twitter and entering it as my website when leaving comments elsewhere.

Firefox is the most used browser to view this site - 6, 373 of you use it, compared to 3, 668 who use Google Chrome. No, I am telling the truth, I'll do a screencap if you ask. I'm as shocked as some of you will be. Visitors have come from the UK predominantly, with a few thousand from the US, thanks to a mention I suspect from TweetyHall. But, Russia, South Korea, Ireland, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada and France are also there. I am a teensy bit worried about one of those countries appearing in this list but also heartened.

2010 was the year I stuck my head above the parapet, with this blog. It was the year I formed opinions which are constantly changing, where I met people who are kind enough to accord me the courtesy of disagreeing with me and helping me see why I am wrong, and the year I learnt that I might be able to write a little bit better than I thought I could (which defaulted to 'I am crap at everything').

When you stick your head up, and speak, and you are honest with your words, people come and shoot at you. The snipers come, searching for the elusive cry of 'headshot!'. This is not a popularity contest. This is not a 'look at me, I'm brilliant I am' blog. This is where I come to think and wrangle and wrestle and think. Most of all, think, about what we do, how we do it, why we do it and how we can do it better. I am wrong. I am wrong in so many ways, on so many levels and so often. I disclaimer things until I am blue in the face because I do not pretend to anything absolutely, only to think something at a particular time and want to share it, to see what others think too. I like transparency, I like openness, I like thinking, I like collaboration, I like honesty, I like real, I like local government.

I don't like cowards.

2 comments:

  1. You're probably right more often than you think...
    Why? Well, people who talk as if they're always right have almost always decided the opposite to what you say about discussing & learning & thinking. If I'm 'always right' I probably think I've learned all I will ever need to.

    If, however, I realise that I have been, am, and will be wrong about stuff then I'm ready to listen & be taught. I reckon this is really important, and I wish I'd not learned it the hard way so many times! So, anyway, if you're listening & learning you're almost certainly right about some stuff!

    At a slight tangent I heard an ace quote about what the point is of being right. In modern society it seems people think the reason to be 'right' is to feel superior. The quote "being right enables you to adequately deal with reality". I reckon if people saw things this way it would gets rid of a lot of arrogance.

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  2. some things you just know are right. 2+2=4 and all that. Some things are just right, and some things need a gradely dose of thinking and talking about. Then they can end up right. An opinion is just that, and everyone is entitled to one. I love opinions, and people with opinions. I love being given something to think about. Keep up the good work, you are always setting me off on another train of thought.
    The only thing I really object to, (and you are not guilty) is people or organisations hyping up stuff and spinning. The biggest culprit in my shiny world at the moment is BT. Saying infinity is 'fibre broadband'. So many people believe this is true. It is not right, it is clever marketing, but millions will sadly fall for it.
    Your writing has never suffered from hype or spin. It is what it says on the box. Always.
    Keep the faith.
    chris

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