Blogging and the world of business

UPDATE January 03, 2006:
Attention to participants of the Blog Africa "Africa Quiz 2005"

Please follow this link for detailed information about the Congolese botanist and conservationist Corneille E.N. Ewango. The April 22, 2005 post below "Blogging and the world of businesses" unfortunately contained links to two blogs that are no longer online. That problem has been fixed today. Thanks for participating in the Africa Quiz 2005 and we hope that it was fun.

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Original Post April 22, 2005

I want to begin this posting today by saying to some of my fellow blogger buddies that I am truly humbled and terribly proud of the work you are doing. In the past 30 years (Wow! Has it been that long??) that I have been involved with electrical engineering and the ICT fields we have seen a lot of things come and go. I am amazed many times at the creativity and brilliance I see pouring out of people who are publishing online and their willingness to share information and knowledge and all kinds of stuff with other blog authors and their reader audience. To this day many tech purists continue to ignore the power of these simple web publishing tools (blog software) albeit at their own peril. There are between 9 and 10 million weblogs out there, 40,000 new ones per day.

I appreciate the comments saying thanks for my encouragement, but it is I and many others in the tech field and other professions who must say thanks to you. Some of us have waited for this explosion of creativity and collaboration using simple tech tools for a very long time. Bravo to you.

Now in my little sector of the Blogosphere (can’t cover the whole thing, it’s growing too fast!!) I have been paying particular attention to the laidies, not to say that the guys aren’t doing good work ‘cause many of you are, but the women are just moving like Gazelles. Again bravo to the women, it’s about time that you left the boyz behind in the dust. Go on girlz.

Kenya Hudson who has recently returned to blogging from what must be a really busy schedule posted a nice morsel the other day that has important value and I plan to build upon some of what she could only state briefly. The same goes for Carine in a brief article she has done on Corneille E.N. Ewango, winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize 2005 for the work he has done at the Okapi Faunal Reserve in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Wangari Maathai, the Nobel Prize for Peace 2005 laureate, received this coveted prize for grassroots environmental work in 1991. Africa in many ways is still in a frontier stage, underdeveloped and working desperately for engagement from the world of global business, not just begging for humanitarian and development aid. In recent history no continent, no nation, has been able to fulfill the wants and needs and ambitions of its peoples with just handouts and loans from the IMF or World Bank and the like. None.

Now what does this have to do with blogs and business? Well, read the special cover feature of the upcoming May 2, 2005 issue of BusinessWeek magazine: Blogs Will Change Your Business to get an idea about the shakeup blogs and bloggers are causing in corporate America and soon to arrive in Europe. Then think to yourself how this might apply to businesses in emerging markets i.e. the African continent, Asia, South America. If you are interested in the world of business this BW feature article could be very useful for you.

I receive the BusinessWeek Insider email newsletter for years now and a link to this special preview article was included in today’s BW email. However, I first discovered the news about the BusinessWeek cover story at Amy Gahran’s Contentious blog. You can learn quite a bit about blogging at her place and from her readers (see comments). Another good place to learn about business blogs is at the Business 2.0 online magazine’s B2Day. Despite the 1,000’s of information feeds I receive about technology every month and year the first place I learned about weblogs was by reading a February 2002 article at the Business 2.0 site.

I’ve recently added the Nairobi, Kenya financial blogger bankelele to my blogroll and the Timbuktu Chronicles business blog has been on my roll for ages now. Check these folks out when you find the time. The next time someone tries to tell you that blogging is just a waste of time and nobody is earning money with blogs, just smile. Smile like a fox on Wall Street.