ED Futures is 365 Days Old Today!

We made it through the first year. If I am correct, articles were posted to ED Futures every day during the past year. That is no easy matter with other demands on your time.

Running this blog has been a rewarding experience for me. Almost 5,700 people from across the world have asked to subscribe to the ED Futures e-newsletter. Traffic at the ED Futures website continues to grow, which suggests that we are providing a valuable service to our clients and the general public.

Here is what I said in my starting ED Futures post on January 4, 2003: "This is an online journal where you can find interesting ideas and insights about the evolution of economic development practice and policy across the United States and globally."

We have stuck to that mission statement in the past year and believe that ED Futures should continue on this path in 2004.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our readers for looking to us for timely information about where economic development is headed. I also want to thank the many content providers and information sources that have been grist for the ED Futures mill over the past year. Also, I would like to thank the NE Ohio blogging community for its support and companionship over the past year. It helps to do something like this with others' encouragement and help. Two people deserve special mention since they have been especially helpful to me:

1. Ed Morrison at the Center for Regional Economic Issues at Case Western Reserve University, who runs EDPro@REI. I had the first ED electronic newsletter which became my blog, and Ed actually had the first ED blog.

2. George Nemeth from Brewedfreshdaily who serves as a portal for all the known public blogs in NE Ohio. George has been a big help on some technical issues related to the blog and I appreciate the portal service that he provides to all NEO bloggers.

We continue to invite your feedback on how we're doing and how we can improve in the future. Also, please use the commenting software found on ED Futures to leave us comments. We really want to hear from you.

Best wishes for 2004!