1,000 Posts On: Runner-Up In The IT Professional Blogger Award

This is the 1,000^th blog post since the blog was launched 5 years ago, on 1^st November 2006.  This anniversary therefore provides an ideal opportunity to announce the news that the UK Web Focus blog was the runner-up in the IT Professional Blogger of the Year category of the Computer Weekly Social Media Awards.

The winner of this category was Elizabeth Harrin for her blog A Girl’s Guide to Project Management.  As described on the About page on her blog Elizabeth also launched her blog in 2006. Looking at the frequency of her postings, Elizabeth is clearly passionate about her blog and reading her page on Earning Disclosure she takes an open and responsible approach in being honest with the readers of her blog.  Elizabeth is a well-deserved winner of this award and I was pleased to have the opportunity to chat with her briefly last night.

For those who are unfamiliar with the UK Web Focus blog it “functions as an open notebook which provides personal thoughts, reflections and observations on the role of the Web in higher and further education which I hope will inform readers and stimulate discussion and debate“.

Although the blog regularly addresses technical Web developments an additional important area covers the importance of openness, in a broad sense to support key institutional activities.  As well as writing papers in this area (such as the paper on Openness in Higher Education: Open Source, Open Standards, Open Access and Let’s Free IT Support Materials!) the blog also embraces such values: content published on this blog is available under a Creative Commons licence (which, during Open Access Week 2011 was changed from CC-BY-SA to CC-BY) and comments are open on all 1,000 blog posts which have been published.

The approaches taken in providing this blog seem to be widely appreciated as can be seen not only from the people who voted for the blog but also from comments I have received recently:

Your blog is an inspiration, long may it continue!

Well done by the way – I catch your bog in my rss reader and am flabberghasted that you can post so much (and all good) – I’m cheering for you.

I love your blog. You have a knack of finding the right subject and the right lessons from it. 

Your blog is an excellent way to keep myself informed about Web 2.0 and it’s good to have a HE perspective.

Many thanks for the comments and the votes :-)   And note that if you’d like to see what happened at the awards ceremony, Elizabeth Harrin’s blog post on “Thank you! I’m IT Professional Blogger of the Year” blog post contains a brief video clip.