The State of Our Blog

First, a little history for you.  When SJVCEO began, waaaay back in 2007 blogs were sort of a new deal. We had ten of them.  That's right.  Ten.  The blog that you know today began as our News and Events blog where the intent was to post meeting notices, conferences, and workshop flyers.  But something happened, better stated, nothing happened.  We had eight posts in all of 2008 and that number dropped off to six in 2009.  We just never acted like a "typical" non-profit.  Our meetings were reserved for the board, and we only ever had one conference per year and that ended in 2009!

We had separate blogs for sustainable communities, renewable energy, biofuels, board members--heck, we had a blog just for media releases that had all of zero posts!  Needless to say we were figuring it out as we went; or as our former Executive Director liked to say, "we're learning to fly while we build the plane".  Something had to give--and one day late in 2009 I just got tired of looking at so many pointless blogs and deleted all but one.

Something else happened in 2009, actually two somethings happened:

Somehow Mike Nemeth and Sandy Nax stumbled into our little operation.  With more than 50 years newspaper experience between them it didn't take long for them to realize the story was our blog needed some lovin'! Soon, between the two the SJVCEO blog was seeing an average of 20 blogs per month.

The most viewed post ever? This gem on electric cars and John Bonham (classic Mike).  The biggest month on record? May 2012 with coverage of everything from solar, to bios, to efficiency, a book review, and an EV shaped like a doughnut.  There was a heck of a lot going on.  And, somewhat fitting, it was Sandy's last month with SJVCEO, and the truth is we've never been able to keep it up since he left.

Then, in the betrayals of all betrayals (what, too much?) Mike abandoned ship and moved down the road to the Air Pollution Control District!

Obviously the wound is still fresh in the SJVCEO office, and one of us may have a flair for the dramatic...


Mike actually still blogs for us.  It was one of his demands upon leaving.  And honestly, if it wasn't for him we would have been dead for the last month and a half.  If you didn't catch them here, here, and here are a few of my favorite post-SJVCEO Mike blogs; this is my absolute favorite--but that's more because Mike's granddaughter, Petra--er, I mean Lem--makes an apperance.  That and it's pretty much awesome.

Okay, long way around to say we needed to make a change or as Petra/Lem would do, move fluidly within our current environment.  We have a new team member, Dee, who made her blog debut yesterday. And Maureen and I are still here, slaving away in a world of energy benchmarking.

So the state of the blog is this: there are now three ladies running the show.  None of us are of the caliber of Mike and Sandy, but we're going to do the best we can to serve their legacy and maybe, just maybe we'll hit that magic number of 100,000 views.  Because we're women we met, made lists, refined our lists, and made a lunch date to address the handling of the blog.  What can you expect from us?  A guaranteed five posts per week (starting Monday, September 24th--also known as my birthday).  We will each post one topic post per week.  Dee will be taking on "Money Mondays" with news, resources, and tips for finance in the clean energy world.  On Wednesday you'll be treated to "Wellness Wednesdays" (somebody loves alliteration, and that somebody is me!) where Maureen will spell out the connection between energy, the environment and your personal wellness.  As for me, I'm looking forward to "Believe it or Not" each Thursday where I get to share something weird or unusual with you--hmm, I wonder what Mike would do? Tuesdays and Fridays are dealers choice, so whatever Dee feels like sharing is what you'll get! Word is Mike will still be on the blog, and we're happy to let him stay since he's sort of like our street cred in the blog world.  And, who knows--we're open to guest bloggers around here, even my brother-in-law took a turn.

We are going to do our best, and we hope you keep reading.  There's been a lot of love that went in and I feel a strong sense of responsibility to see this blog continue.  As I said to Sandy today in an email, "Always [blogging]. Maybe not at the levels of the past, but we'll keep it going" and we will.