About Us

28 September 2010

This blog has been running for a little over 6 months now, so I’m well overdue for updating this page.  If nothing much had happened in that time, I wouldn’t bother.  But a lot’s been going on behind the scenes here that you might be interested to know.

I’ve started to think about blogging as consisting of three elements: content, medium and audience.  A blog can’t exist without all three, so I’ll describe the changes using those headings.  At the bottom of the page, in italics, is my original ‘about us’ post, so you can compare and see how things have developed here.  Constructive criticism would be much appreciated.

Content:

My writing style has changed somewhat, I think I’m a bit less intrusive and not so eager to spell out every detail.  Subject matter has become more current.  I would like to include more music clips than I have in the past and also about the daily lives of Indonesians and how they respond differently to people in the West with similar issues.  Regular readers may also have noticed that it’s not just me anymore.  Ana came on board soon after the start and has written two posts.  She also collaborates on articles for fact checking, language and content matters.

Medium

Ana and I have been on a steep learning curve.  Especially since we shifted the site from its original free WordPress domain to the current one.  This happened just over a month ago.  The process of transferring the data was difficult and it wouldn’t have happened if Ana hadn’t persisted with it.  I think it looks a lot better than the old site, especially the banner, and it feels good to have more control.  Even though we’re still using WordPress software.

Audience

Hits were growing steadily until we transferred to the new site.  After that, it was almost like starting again.  I also had a month’s holidays overseas and wasn’t posting nearly as often as usual.  Lucky there’s quite a bit of content already on the site.  I’ve been back for a week now and hits have now reached the levels where they were before.  Until now, we haven’t been making much of an effort to spread the word about the blog, it’s all been organic growth.  Then Google Adwords offered us a free plug, so we’ve put an advertisement up.  It will be running until the end of the month.  We wouldn’t have used it if it wasn’t free, but it’s an interesting experiment.

My favourite posts so far are Rhoma Irama, Gamelan Cudamani, Mudik and the goat.  The most popular ones with readers have been the Peterporn Sex Scandal, Rhoma Irama, Kuta Cowboys, Pinocchio Frog and Didi Kompot.

There’s a lot of work still to be done.  I’m hoping to increase the number of posts per day.  There’s quite a bit of sitework that needs doing.  I also want to see the readers contributing more ideas and making requests, we’ll have to work on ways to encourage that.  I also intend to keep you better informed about what’s going on with the site as it happens.  Thanks for reading the blog, we appreciate you taking the time to do that and we hope you enjoy it.

This is my previous ‘About Us’ post:

It’s two weeks since I started this blog. I have two main reasons for blogging. First is to inform the English-speaking world about the positive side of Indonesia, second  is to teach myself about blogging.

In my opinion, the West knows little about Indonesia, considering its importance as an economy and as a repository of languages and cultures. I find it interesting to see the way Indonesians respond to external influences and absorb them into their own context. The Western media only shows the bad things – tsunami, earthquakes, mudslide, fanatics, corruption, volcanoes, ecological disasters. But there are many positive things that don’t get reported – 8%pa economic growth, economic reform, political stability, wonderful food, friendly people.

From what I’ve posted, the people who would get the most from this blog are travellers and students, but I hope it’s interesting enough for those who are just curious and looking for a few minute’s entertainment/information.