During this brief Italian vacation, I realized that I started this blog in 2009, today. That's 15 years ago.
A very long time, and although it's not my longest-running online presence, but it's certainly the most consistent one.
What have I learned in these past 15 years?
Blogs were, especially in Italy, a passing phenomenon. In the early 2000s, if you didn't have your own space where you could express your thoughts, you were essentially out of the game. Unlike forums, blogs allowed those with something interesting to say to stand out from the background noise of trolls and serial posters since forums were the only competitors at that time. They became the first true manifestation of one of the theses of bottom-up conversations as established by The Cluetrain Manifesto:
A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.
For a few months, I was also part of what was then called the blog stars circuit. I was invited to events, to participate in debates, and to promote products.
Did social media kill that era? In Italy, undoubtedly. We are a people born for social media; we are slaves to voyeurism and naturally inclined towards flames and drama. Those who had a blog suddenly felt delegitimized and, deprived of their moment of glory, ended up getting bored and stopped writing, witnessing the rise of influencers first and creators later.
But if you didn't care much about entering the arena for the battle of attention, and if your goal was, as it still is for me, to have a presence on the Web where you can be yourself and weave valuable relationships, then almost certainly your blog has survived all this and is alive and well.
In 15 years, I've found friends, work partners, acquaintances, and had the opportunity to interact with some of the people I admire most, and this still happens today, like last year with Manuel and his help in rebuilding this space almost from scratch.
I've only recently realized, perhaps too late, that to truly open up to the world, I would need something different, namely to start writing in English. Because outside our national borders, people haven't surrendered to an idea of the Internet entirely equivalent to social media. Elsewhere, there are still people who prefer to interact as they did 20 years ago, where all you need is to share stories via an email address.
Perhaps anachronistic? Likely, but certainly more genuine and profound. Digging deeper down without having to widen the perimeter.
I will forever be grateful for choosing to make this decision 15 years ago. These pages have been an effective therapy for me, a journey of self-discovery before even discovering the world.
I will always be grateful to all the people I've met over these years, even if they were part of my life for just a second.
This place will continue to exist as long as I can take care of it, as long as existing technologies allow me to do so. It's an extension of my being.
An open bar tab whose final balance will always be in my favor.