Wow. I just realized on Monday that my blog is now 5 years old (not all blogs have this staying power). To celebrate, I have actually gone back and separated out the posts in the early years (blogger in the early years didn't do this easily), so that it is easier to find old posts (though I should have started this blog on wordpress, which would have been more user friendly*). I also reread a number of my old posts as I did this.
This has led me to the following THINGS EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW about me and this blog:
1) I still mostly agree with myself and find my early naivete and optimism to be amusing and refreshing. I also laugh at my own jokes.
2) The fields of BOP focused business and social entrepreneurship are progressing. In the early days, there wasn't much written and there were few conferences. Now it is hard (e.g., impossible for me) to keep up with the many books, articles and events.
3) I still have little idea of who the thousands of people are who read my blog every month. Commenting on blogs seems to be "so 2007." In any event, thank you. I hope my thoughts are useful to you. And I hope that many of you are "BOPreneurs" (or at least proto-BOPreneurs).
4) If you want to increase your readership, use titles such as "10 steps to...", "Ten Tips on...", "8 Things Everyone Needs to Know about... " or make references to sex and/or celebrities (I never anticipated that Julia Roberts would become the spokesperson for clean cookstoves).**
5) The way people come to my blog has changed. Used to be google and RSS. Now it is twitter and facebook.
6) I don't post as often as I used to. Part of this is that I have said what I have to say on what I view as key topics. And part of this is that I have less time. And part is I am now exploring impact investing more deeply... my guess is that more future posts will be on this topic. But I will leave BOPvestor blog to someone else (Ross? Rob?).
7) I started this blog to share my thoughts and learnings about my core belief that entrepreneurship is a powerful force for positive change in the world. From the beginning, my focus*** has been "to share experiences and opinions about the BOP, entrepreneurship, investing, philanthropy, sustainability, teaching, innovation, design or whatever I feel like." This focused approach seems to be working so far.
8) I still plan to write "longer than average" posts. Sorry, Nathaneal. I also hope to have more guest posts. (Ben Lyon, if you are reading this, you still owe me).
For twitter followers and facebook friends, this week I will be bringing back a few of my posts from the vaults. Looking back, some seem prescient, some misguided... and most unrepentantly optimistic.
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*Except I had no clue what I was doing. As in many things, I just started, and figured it out as I went.
**The title of this post could have worked in a sex theme too, but I just won't stoop that low on the 5th anniversary.
*** Use of intentional irony. Times two.
2 comments:
Happy Anniversary BOPreneur! Thanks for thinking outloud and pushing important ideas out the door.
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Francisco
Happy Anniversary! Speaking of celebrating beginnings, would be great if you can check out my (relatively) new blog on India's social sector evolution. I explore the field of Impact Investing in recent articles that you might interesting. The link: www.thesocialsectorblog.blogspot.com
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