Prologue

I started the original Reinventing Media Blog on the intranet of my previous employer, a global publishing company in both the B2B and B2C space; I ran the web business for one of their B2B brands. Although the intranet location greatly restricted the blog's audience, it allowed me to discuss operational specifics of the web business I managed, including company-confidential details, that were helpful to our other brands and business units navigating the tricky path from a print focus to Web 2.0. The original blog ran from August 2006 through October 2007.

Now that I've moved on, I'm making the blog public-facing. I'll have a larger audience (I hope), but won't be able to talk quite so frankly. Or more likely, I'll just discuss different things--fewer details, more ideas.

Not all of the posts from the past were confidential, so before I get (re)started I'm posting excerpts here to represent what came before and set the tone for where I'm aiming to take this discussion. All of us working in online media today are on the cutting edge of reinventing a critical channel for human communication. It's exciting, historic, and frequently perplexing. Often we're so enmeshed in day-to-day problem-solving that we lose sight of the adventuresome, pioneer nature of our endeavors. Today's seemingly random decisions become tomorrow's precedents and benchmarks. With that in mind, it's worth taking a pause from time to time to assess progress and strategize about next steps.

That's my mission in the Reinventing Media Blog: to give thoughtful consideration to this process that's now barreling along, of reinventing traditional media for the digital age. I hope you'll chime in to tell me what I'm missing and where I'm off track. Web 2.0 and beyond are all about conversations, not monologues. With luck this blog will mirror the philosophies it's contemplating.