ALIA Elections - two years ago and now

Two years ago I established this blog as part of my campaign to be elected vice president of ALIA. Now, looking through the ALIA election material for the Board elections this year, and thinking back, I was struck by two things.

First, it was so much easier to vote this time, with the introduction of online voting. I don't know why we didn't do it before, and I certainly don't understand why anyone would ever not vote again. Everyone - please vote, it is so easy.

Second, the candidates, with one exception, don't really seem to have Web 2.0ed much at all. I have found three blogs for the five candidates. Richard Siegersma's engaging blog has a number of posts on a variety of issues, and even a few comments. Kate Sinclair has advoKate - great name, but it needs more than one post. And Lothar von Retzlaff has a blog entitled Lothervonretzlaff, but alas, also a single post. Neither Gill Hallam nor Stuart Ferguson has a blog that I can find, but I am happy to be corrected.

The ALIA Board has taken our elections into the Web 2.0 zone - what about the candidates?

Blogs

I have disbelieved the figures one reads in the Wikipedia and elsewhere about the number of blogs in the world - how can there be over 75 million? However, I was at a meeting of the board of the Australian Digital Alliance on Tuesday, and the chair of the board, Jamie Wodetzki, happened to mention his blog, the Breakfast Blog. I say "happened" but it is a blog to be proud of. It was the 2007 winner of the Best Australian/New Zealand Weblog in the annual bloggie awards and has been profiled and interviewed by Yahoo. I had no idea.

Not only does Jamie provide regular reviews of breakfast, but he also includes, in a June post to the blog, comments on the recent restaurant review issued by the High Court (Mr Justice Kirby dissenting) in John Fairfax Publications Pty Ltd vs Gacic in June - read more about the case, which involves defamation, the Coco Roco restaurant, and its limoncello oysters . The blog is well worth looking at, especially if you enjoy breakfast out - and who doesn't?

Moreover, Jamie's day job, which is running a company called Exari, also involves another blog. This is for the company, which is all about a more effective way of putting together legal and other documents, such as contracts.

So there are lots of blogs, and they often leap out at you. You may have noticed some lapses in the appearance of this blog, especially last week. I am inspired by blogging achievements, although just keeping up is sometimes an achievement too. And I have lots of words of the day (or week) sitting around. More suggestions please!