In an effort to separate my rantings from actual INJM news, we (actually I) decided it would be best if I have my own place where I can run free.

This is great for two reasons:

 

  • Writing a blog entry takes a lot of time.
  • Writing an update is really easy.

 

You would think they would be one and the same, but you would be wrong.

An update on news and activities is very straight forward. Who, where, what, when. “We went here yesterday and we did this.”. Easy.

 

Pure fact.

 

A blog entry is more like: “We went here yesterday, and we did this. It made me feel like <FEELING>, and I also noticed x, y and z, which is interesting because previously, z and y had been  x and then blahblahblah“.

 

It takes several hours for me to write one. Maybe I just spend too long on them, I don’t know. But if I put something out, I want to be happy with it. On the other hand, an update is really easy. It’s pure fact, and it feels a little bit impersonal.

Speaking generally, people don’t want to see sarcasm, humour or dare I say it, wit when they check our website.  They want facts. They want info. They want a little more INJM and a little less Jamie.

Sure, it’s more entertaining to read an account of the days events when it contains funny stories, but as INJM gets bigger (and it really has gotten bigger), it becomes less and less practical to include all that stuff.

The site is slowly getting more and more business like. Maybe that’s a bad choice of words. More professional looking. Maybe not in design (give it time!), but in content. Which can only be a good thing. If i’m brutally honest (and I generally am), it’s all about the money. Money comes from donors. And donors don’t want to see something different and quirky. They want something solid and reliable. And rightly so. If I was a donor, so would I.

The truth is, when I realized that I’d have to do away with “the Jamie-ness”, it broke my heart a little bit.

Someone said to me:

If you take away the Jamie stuff, it takes away the thing which made you guys different. That “thing” is why I wanted to get involved with you.

 

Which was one of the nicest things anyone has said to me in a long time. Thank you very much.

But let me reassure you:

That “thing” hasn’t gone. It’s still here, we’re still the same. We still make jokes, we still have fun, we still do good work (no false modesty here, we rock!). We just have to be a bit more serious on our website.

The INJM Facebook group has plenty of pictures and posts from our members. It is a place where we are ourselves. So there’s lots of silly pictures on here, lots of “in” jokes, and the like. The INJM Facebook page
 is more serious, it will function as a news outlet, much like how the news page of this site (once it’s up and running) will do.

 

But Jamie’s blog? This one is for me. The 3 M’s (Manish, Marci and Masae) might think that this first post is a little bit too extreme. But I don’t really have to listen to them. This is my place, and it’s here that I can do what I want.

Let’s just call it one of the perks of being the boss.

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