This time last year we were heavy into the design and implementation of Blogware. I was still using MovableType for my public weblog but we had already started using prototype v0.0 quietly. I was pretty excited when I got to get hands on with the tool and committed my first entry to the system. We were still calling it "RBlog" internally. Its neat to look back on the posts I made during this period.

Most everything weblogging related that I blogged, were things we were actively working on. I hoped we might be the only ones...I obviously didn't look hard enough around the room ;)

Around this time last year I mentioned to Doc during an early demo that we weren't building a better way to manage content, we were building a better way to manage human interactions over the internet.

Not a social network. 

A conversation management system.

We talked about this for a bit. My basic point was that the internet didn't need another publishing system and we certainly didn't need Frontpage or Dreamweaver to get better. Web page publishing tools engender the creation of what ends up being static content because the tools are inscrutable for the average user. Learn the application, learn design, learn to tune the HTML by hand, figure out a document structure, upload everything via FTP, wash, rinse, repeat.

Dumb.

Static content and the entire associated toolspace stands in the way of a more useful internet. More content is not better. Changing content is better. Growing content is better. Living, dynamic content- is better. An internet that grows with me challenges me - continuously. Regular content creation tools stifle this possibility - they are simply too complicated and inaccessible to the average bear. "Save as HTML", "web development", "get a presence on the 'net". Whatever that means.

People need new tools that allow us to manage our interactions with others, the conversations we have every day¹. Tools that facilitate fluidity and impermanence. Impermanence, not of the content of the conversation, but of the conversation itself - beginning and end, not necessarily continuing. Ad hoc, impulsive, dynamic.

I want my customers to talk with the web and I want Blogware to help them manage these conversations.

Are we there yet? Not quite. Not by a longshot actually. But we have made a lot of headway and we're still moving forward.

¹Tools will also need to have their own conversations - with other tools. In fact the more they have, the better. Preferably in a multitude of languages. Customers shouldn't necessarily see these conversations though.