Reflections on 2019 and on to explore 2020!

I spent the first day of the new year reflecting on the past year and making plans for the coming months.

Looking back, I had a pretty good year. I hiked in the mountains, and dipped my toes in the ocean. I grew vegetables in my garden. I saw beautiful works of nature and thoughtful works of art.

I worked just hard enough, created videos, wrote tutorials, and did my best to keep up with changes in technology.

I was honored to win the Creator Award at the Google Product Expert meetup in Boulder, Colorado. I work hard at creating my tutorials, in the hope that it will help people find the answers to their questions that aren't well-addressed in the official help forums. It feels great to have my efforts acknowledged.

2019 Google Product Expert Creator Award

And I was pleased to be highlighted as one of the "people who make YouTube better" on the YouTube Contributors page.

I like to understand how things work, and it makes me happy to share that information with others.

But I have also felt like I'm having trouble focusing. I have multiple partially started projects, goals I haven't met, and I have been looking for a new online home.

Finding Community

As regular readers know I was very active on Google+ for years, both publicly and in private communities. The shutdown of consumer Google+ on April 2 was a sad day. Plussers I followed and frequently interacted with scattered across the web.

Here I am on the Google+"Fun & Interesting" Suggested User List in 2014.
I'm not sure I was actually either as fun as the Onion or as interesting as Jaana Nyström.

It felt like the final days of senior year, when everyone exchanges their contact information and promises to write -- and then the school was torn down. There is no going back.

And it was a bit like saying goodbye to friends met on holiday, when you know that even if you meet up again in a different context it won't be quite the same.

I joined a number of different social networks that welcomed the Google+ diaspora. I'm a bit active on MeWe and I regularly post on Twitter. And i still connect with folks on Hangouts, in email, and various other places on the internet.

But none of them offer the combination of public and private interactions offered by Google+. And even if they did provide the same features, there wouldn't be the same community. I'm still looking for that.

On e Board OneBoard

I did join an international group of fellow ex-Plussers in the On eBoard Network. We meet regularly (online) to talk about our goals and learn about tech together. And chit chat, of course. We all have different backgrounds and interests, and so it's been an excellent learning experience. The official site is up, but still under development.

And this perhaps is the answer. My home is here on this site, and I interact with others in different communities. Not one place, but several.

Commitment 2020: Explore

One of the traditions of OneBoard is the annual declaration of a commitment for the next year. Previous years the group had a public Hangout on Air. As that's no longer an option, our discussion was recorded, edited and uploaded by Nina Trankova.

My commitment for 2020 is to Explore.

I spent a good part of 2019 trying different social media sites, trying out different apps and online services and planning a number of projects, most of which haven't really been even started, let alone completed.

So in 2020 I want to explore my sites, services and projects in depth.

I need to put in enough time on the various sites and services I've signed up for to understand the features, give them a real try, and then decide whether to use it, or just move on.

I also want to focus on my projects enough to be able to decide whether they are worth finishing, and then find the tools and invest the time I need to do that.

So less flitting from site to site and project to project, and more testing, investigating and focus.

I hope by this time next year I can report some success in doing that.

2019 by the numbers

Thank you all for reading and watching and following me on Twitter! Here's a quick overview of my online presence in 2019 and goals for 2020.

Google+

My Google+ Profile on December 31, 2018 😢

At the end of 2018 I had 900,742 Followers on Google+. All of those disappeared on April 2nd.

I'm fortunate to have cultivated an online presence outside of Google+. In particular, having my own domain for my blog gives me my own independent online home. Even if Blogger shut down tomorrow (which, to be clear, I don't think is likely), I could move my blog posts to another platform.

And while I was concerned that I would lose blog readers and video viewers without Google+ to promote them, they seem to have done OK since April.

My Blog (www.peggyktc.com)

When Google announced that Google+ would be shutting down in October 2018, I started shifting my focus to posting significant updates here on PeggyKTC.com. That turned out to be a good strategy, as the shutdown of Google+ was accelerated, giving active Plussers little time to build a new home if they didn't have already.

In addition to the Weekly Update, I post tutorials and detailed updates. That posting was significantly increased this year: from 11 articles in 2018 to 72 articles in 2019.
Disappointingly, total page views only increased 5% from 2018
Most site visitors came from Google search.
There are 1107 email subscribers via Feedburner.
This blog are only 17 Blogger Followers. Those are folks who added the blog manually to their Blogger Reading List, as I don't have a Follower gadget on my blog.

Comments

Paolo AmorosoJanuary 2, 2020 at 1:21 AM
Thank you for all the great content and best wishes for your projects in 2020.
Craig LongJanuary 2, 2020 at 8:08 AM
Big business will let you down eventually. I always thought they should pay you then you wouldn't have much to loose.
Nina TrankovaJanuary 2, 2020 at 12:49 PM
It's been a privilege to stay connected and collaborate with you, Peggy! Especially along the year 2019 of extreme changes! Thank you for your dedication to Creators and creative content! For best Explore results in the New Year 2020!
Diana StuderJanuary 2, 2020 at 1:00 PM
I rely on you for tech and Blogger updates.
Bob DanleyJanuary 2, 2020 at 8:55 PM
Happy New Year Peggy! Reading this blog...well, the work you have accomplished is really impressive! We are very lucky to have your knowledge, experience on EBoard. Believe you will be hugely successful teasing out the plusses/minuses of your various platforms. If you have time read, skim: "How to be an explorer of the World" written by Keri Smith. It is offbeat and will ask you to do things that make you feel a bit strange...good for creativity.

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