Jordan Watch : Review of a year in blogging

Well, it has been a fantastic first year in blogging for me. Did I reach "blogging maturity" yet? I do not know but what I can say is that I have enjoyed the first year experience of blogging but I am now trying to assess this phase seriously and I will be posting a series of personalized posts about blogging today to reflect on the past year.

I still recall the days when I developed my desire to create my own online space after being alerted to the Jordanian blogging community by my colleague Rai'da Zou'bi who is an ICT researchers and a great girl dedicated to the advance of this country from her own place of impact. She told me about Jordan Planat in December 2005 and I was very excited to see the content there.

In the second and third weeks of December 2005 I travelled to Italy to attend a training course for two weeks on environmental economics in a remarkable research facility in Trieste that was isolated from the nearest city but had full internet access. In the two weeks of cold and rainy long nights I browsed Jordan Planet and managed to accumulate a good knowledge about blogging techniques and ways of writing. I was impressed by many bloggers. As a person interested in politics and general affairs I was very excited to read bloggers like Naseem Tarawneh, Natasha Twal, Khalaf, Ahmad Humeid, Haitham Sabbah, Hareega, Jameed, Roba, Tololy, Khalidah and Lina. Then I decided to create my own blog.

I wanted to make sure that this was not a hype, and that I know exactly what I am going to do. As a professional writer with a daily column in Addustour newspaper one might ask why should I create a blog if I have a platform to express my ideas. There are many reasons.

Official media outlets have limited freedoms of expression. I consider myself lucky at Addustour since the "roof" of expression is higher than most conventional media outlets but still there are issues taht you cannot write about or express in a newspaper. For example I cannot criticise a big advertiser (fastlink or mobilecom) because of their economic impact. I cannot express clear secular or liberal ideas because they can be sensitive to the social belief system and naturally it is difficult to criticise the governemnt unless the circumstances are OK in terms that you have a government that is open to other opiniosn or screws up in a way that cannot be neglected.

The other reason is that blogs are more interactive and I was not impressed with the amount of feedback I get from published articles. I wanted to see and engage in direct debates in an open platform like the blogs.

I wanted my blog to be open with no restriction or comments. That was very important learning experience for me although I got a lot of stick and criticism that was sometimes not justified at all but I tried my best to let everyone write their opinions unless there is direct insult which was more common in the Arabic blog.

One good decision I made was to use Jeerran as my hosting place. I tried to start with blogger but did not like the setup. I explored Jeeran and learned it was a Jordanian company initiated by two Jordanian enterpreuners so I wanted to localize my hosting and was impressed by the tools available at Jeeran and the user friendly nature of applications.

One of the issues I felt problematic was the language. I wanted to write in English with a target audience of english speakers who usually do not read arabic newspapers and I focused my article in English on expressing a Jordanian perspective that is pro-country, critical of the government and supportive of public freedoms. Obviously many of my readers did not think I manage dto do a good job here. I will reflect more on the content in another post.

I wanted also to write in Arabic and thus created an Arabic blog for another audience and it was a more enriching experience than I ever expected. I will write about it in details in my Arabic blog also.

Blogging has entered my life and took away a lot of time that was supposed to go to work and family and leisure. I did not put much effort in promoting the blog apart from submitting to major aggregates and my result of unique visitors was 55,000 for the Arabic blog and 50,000 for the English since I started.

I made some turns and twists in my blog name and then had my own domain which was a great step forward.

I managed to meet a lot of nice bloggers but failed to communicate properly in personal terms. I attended only one JP meeting in April and then missed the others and each time due to work and family committments. I need to get to know people more.

More to come on my blogging bloopers and Schizophrenia, and the thoughts for Jordan Watch in 2007.