Happy 3rd b-day, blog!

No sh!t. Tomorrow, the NAN blog is three years old! As I write this, we are at “1,010 posts and 393 comments, contained within 25 categories.” On February 20th, 2003, I started using blogger in a frame on the front page of this (back then, a very different) site, to say, in my very first post:

So, I decided to take a leaf out of the books of josh and jonah and start a weblog on my site. This is the first week of the class I’m lecturing at MCAD, and things are looking good so far. In other news, odys, Nathaniel, hektor, x goes up in Cape Town on Saturday and [odys]elicit has been selected as an exhibition piece for The Chiangmai First New Media Art Festival [note: used to link, but now dead], Thailand. More to come…

Funny, Josh never really updated his blog (like, three times in 3 years) and Jonah, at that point, really just used it for news in a pop-up (and later down the road started the awesome Coin-Op blog, tho this has taken a back seat to his other great writings for more popular web sites). But hey, I didn’t know, and wanted to join (what I perceived to be) the cool club! Art Fag City says that, “2004 saw the rise of blogs in popular mainstream media, but the art community has started to see this medium explode only recently,” and MTAA-RR also only celebrated its 3rd b-day this month, so I am Mos Def an Innovator (early 2003! do I get double points for being in SA, and kind of still being the only art blogger?) and am undoubtedly in good company. (Shout out to Tim – the ‘T’ in MTAA – wazzup?) I win. W00+.

Some highlights of blogging here have been, I think:

Kaganof as a one-year guest, now into his own spin-off: Kagablog
WordPress upgrade (thanks, Jonah!), and I have since designed 3 Open Source – GPL – WordPress 2.0 themes:
- NAN
- stuttering
- artsemerging – UPDATED 30 August 2007, now widget-compatible!
Guest blogging (the very first!) on networked_performance
Ripping off Lawrence Lessig (and him saying he liked it!) on the Blogging the Commons panel at the commons sense conference
More recently, re-blogs at (just some samples) rhizome, networked_performance and rssjockey, features on DVblog
contacts from (and upcoming features in) MacFormat, NYarts, Cimaise Art & Architecture and Metropol
the launches of SAartsEmerging, @Joburg and The Upgrade! Johannesburg
Live Kebble and KKNK coverage
The announcement of my baby – we now know is a girl – due 24 May
And so much more I’m sure I’m missing, so feel free to post your favorites in the comments below. I’m expecting my current guest bloggers – not Kaganof – to feel insulted that they are not mentioned, and am hoping that this may influence them to participate more, and not less….