Call It What You Want, This Blog Thing Is Catching On
By Welcome to your new NCBarBlog, NCBA members and guests. I hope you like the changes we’ve made because we made them with you in mind. With a new look and feel, and some upcoming tweaks to the member posting process, the NCBA blog community aspires to be a welcoming space where you can read, write and stay involved with your NCBA.
NCBarBlog has taken off since we launched it three years ago thanks to member support and contributions. Twenty-eight Sections and Divisions have moved their content from the newsletter format to NCBarBlog since we kicked off, with six more slated to embrace the blog during this 2018-19 bar year.
During 2017-18, more than 300 posts went up on NCBarBlog, earning tens of thousands of page views. Those who have attended the Section and Division Council meetings where I presented information on newsletter readership know that this means a lot more eyes are seeing the articles that members work so hard to research, write and edit.
Building community through the sharing of ideas and information is one reason we blog. Seeing that community grow is a win for us all.
As we continue to build on our success, I want to thank all the members who put aside their skepticism and embraced this project. “Blog” is a strange and clumsy word, one that many of us find unfamiliar despite its persistence in popular parlance for more than 20 years. Some encouraged the use a different term for this web space, an idea that has merit. Blogs brought to mind the image of a pajama-clad young man in his parents’ darkened basement typing out diatribes about obscure topics while slurping Lucky Charms.
As it turns out, the precise term for what Section and Division authors and editors contribute to is “multi-author blog” or “MAB,” a term even less palatable than blog. No alternatives rang true, and, for better or worse, the name NCBarBlog stuck. Blogs are not written in stone, however, so I welcome any suggestions.
Regardless of what we call the vehicle, it’s taking us places, and we are grateful to have you as traveling companions. Thanks for blogging. Keep up the good work.