Hello to Bainbridge Island

A new study concludes that men and women use the Internet differently, and I have to agree. While I may be more of a communicator than some of my gender, I tend to be “goal focused” even in this medium. I kept a personal weblog when I was investigating the use of weblog technology in schools almost 4 years ago, yet after the resulting CMS-based school site was launched my itch to post dwindled. Now, as my family and I undertake to move from metro Seattle to Bainbridge Island, I feel a similar itch to put down in writing some of my thoughts and experiences as an arriviste to our new community (“communities”, actually, but that’s another subject).

This may end up another goal-oriented blog of limited duration. But truly arriving in a community can take a lifetime, or longer, so then again it may last a while. Ten years ago, on first moving to Seattle, I read Andrew Ward’s excellent Out Here and almost tangibly felt his public embarrassment at being put in his newcomer’s place in a town meeting by a 4th-generation Bainbridge Islander. Little did I know I’d myself end up a newcomer here “on the Island”, much less that I’d be tempting public embarrassment myself (I do hang it out there in my corporate blog but for that at least I get a paycheck).