This blog originated, at least in my mind, as a sort of electronic scrapbook to assist with co-authoring a new book on ICT development in Korea, entitled Digital Development in Korea: Building an Information Society. My position at the Fulbright Commission in late 2007 also involved management responsibilities for our networks and web-based technology, so I also thought it would be a good idea to learn what blogging was all about.
During the first several years of maintaining this blog I learned a lot and the blog was helpful in relation to the book project. However, the blog also showed its value as a social networking tool. I met a dozen or so very interesting people with a common interest in the rapidly evolving ICT sector here in Korea and around the world. Some of these people were scholars, some journalists and some were involved in business ventures, but they were all people I would probably not have met without the blog.
In 2012 at the request of a regional United Nations institute in Incheon (United Nations Asian and Pacific Centre for Information and Communication Technology for Development) I began writing a training module on the topic of social media for development (SM4D) an activity that will be reflected in the future development of this blog.