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From Geocities to MTYBlogs: The History of Monterrey's Blogosphere

alan flores — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 04:49:09 +0000

The following Mexican-centered history of weblogs was first published as a three part series on RegioBlogs by contributor, Dr. Alan Flores. It was translated by Andres Hardrada and David Sasaki and has been edited for brevity and clarity.

From last week's Monterrey Bloggers' reunion at Cafe Paraiso

The social and cultural impact of weblogs on how we communicate cannot be denied. Everyday, everywhere in the world, without leaving Mexico, you can find more of them. And as they grow, so do the topics they cover and formats they use. But did you ever wonder how and when this “boom” started? Have weblogs always existed as such? What was their precursor?

Wikipedia helps us and mentions what could have been the first weblog in Spanish: “April 1999, Barrapunto.com is born, a weblog related to free software that offers a logbook system denominated MiBarrapunto (in 2001) and later on moved to the logbook of Barrapunto (2003)…”

We asked our friends here in Monterrey to speak to us about it. Moises Kirsch author of Moiblog and also owner of the business Subjetivo.com commented:

One of the first weblogs that has been recognized today was the novelty section of the NCSA Mosaic page (which was bought by Microsoft to become Internet Explorer). Personaly, to me, weblogs started with Kottke.org and Zeldman.com. These two were the firsts I began to follow constantly and from that moment on I became aware of many more.

Meanwhile, Eduardo Dominguez author of OchoCuartos, which has been functioning since october 2004, chimes in: “Personally, I remember many sites that now can be qualified as blogs and had been online for a while like Slashdots, Shinga, Shack, Blues News or those the programmers published to keep the hungry followers of their games informed.”

Who did not use Geocities at some point? Who did not have it's personal page with this platform? Our friends Moises and Eduardo confess to having their webpage on it. (By the way, as a curiosity, none of them remember the URL of their old site) Moises mentions”…The first reference of a blog in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, to be honest, was my own where I updated sort of constantly with news and commentaries. It began on Geocities, later became Moiseskirsch.com, then moi.kirsch.com.mx, and finally ended up to become what you can see today in moiblog.com…”

Eduardo tells us, “compared to what we have today, my Geocities site just stayed afloat, though it could be said that it was good as long it lasted…” We could probably call such sites the beggining for many bloggers or blogging itself. The intention was probably tha same; we put personal stuff on these pages, family albums, etc.

Perhaps we were always bloggers, but we just gave it a different name. We always had the same goals though the publication platform varied. The evolution is interesting as are the changes that have taken place and will continue to take place.

I agree with Eduardo's comment: “many people have weblogs; they just don't know they do. For them it's just a “website”, their “myspace” or their “MSN Spaces.”

Bitacoras, Blogsmexico, Veneblogs, MTYBlogs - just to name a few - have arisen from the same necessity. First to meet and get to know others like you: “I'm a blogger, but who else is like me?” Then you want to know how many are in your city, state, or country. And from there, bloggers begin to organize themselves in thematic categories.

The growth has been incredible. Services that offer you free blog hosting, exemplary tutorials, new templates, and more. The growth of users is just as incredible. Veneblogs, today, has 2,220 registered Venezuelan blogs. Blogsmexico claims 4,265 weblogs, Bitacoras has 141,705, and the recently resurrected MTYBlogs now has 66 users.

But how did it occur to developers to start these communities? Have they always grouped bloggers like they do today?

Raúl who writes at Isopixel and is in charge of Blogsmexico, tells us some interesting facts:

Blogs México was born on April 20, 2004 - so it will soon turn two years old. It came out of some talks we had at the first couple blogger meetups in Mexico City, which were just three or four of us. It was hard to believe that there were so few of us and we would try to guess the amount of Mexican bloggers scattered around. The most adventurous guess was 500, so you can imagine our surprise when we surpassed that number in the very first days of the directory.

Time passed and my interest in blogs kept increasing. I tried to understand the phenomenon in any way I could, including wanting to do my master's thesis on blogs, which gave me the push to find reliable numbers related to the growth of weblogs.

I met Afrael, who wrote the code for Veneblogs, which Blogs México also runs on. I asked his permission to adopt all of the source code to make Blogs México and the rest is history.

Seyd Rios, who started MTYBlogs, tells us his story:

I bought the domain, MTYBlogs.com in July of 2003 and began the directory and the community weblog around this time. More than anything else, the idea arose from the need of feeling connected to Monterrey while living abroad. In July of 2003 I already had offline a small collection of links to blogs from Monterrey, so really it was just a question of putting them online. I felt the need to make it public because I figured that there were plenty of other Mexicans from Monterrey, like myself, who felt the need to be connected to their city via this “new medium” of blogging.

I think physical distance was the greatest obstacle with MTYBlogs.com because it was impossible for me to attend the reunions and make tighter bonds with the bloggers to strengthen the website. There were two or three well-recognized bloggers in Monterrey's blogosphere and I think it didn't seem to them that someone living outside of the city should initiate the project. But fortunately, their influence wasn't as great as that of the local blogosphere who wanted a directory and everything turned out well.

Monterrey's blogosphere began the day that the first “Regio” (someone from Monterrey) started a weblog and that would be impossible to estimate. I think though that there have been so-called “Alpha Geeks” in Monterrey that have been blogging since the 90's, but the phenomenon arrived to the general population probably in 2001 or 2002.

I have been blogging since before the term blog was coined. In 1999 I kept a site on geocities with a section called “my diary,” which I edited manually. Later I joined the burgeoning blogger movement and started my blog with Blogspot/Blogger, later migrated from Greymatter to Movable Type and now I use WordPress.

In my point of view, blog communities are necessary, but not obligatory. They bring about a sense of belonging and a certain manner of etiquette among the group.

Mexico: Interview with Javier Treviño

alan flores — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 01:08:32 +0000

La versión original de este artículo está disponible en español.

The following interview, conducted by Mexican contributing writer, Alan Flores, was translated by Linda Evarts. The interviewee, Javier Treviño Cantú, is a columnist for El Norte and professor of public policy at the Tec de Monterrey.

While reading authors of Mexican blogs, one comes across a little of everything. The Mexican blogosphere is so inclusive that there is no end to the number of topics and authors. One blog that surprised me was that of Javier Treviño. Treviño spoke to me in the following interview:

Alan Flores: Javier Treviño, thank you for accepting this interview. The resume on your blog is very impressive. For those who haven’t read it, will you please tell us: who is Javier Treviño?

Javier Treviño: Thanks for this splendid opportunity. I am a professional linked to the private and public sectors, as well as to international topics and issues of communication. I was born in Monterrey, and I grew up in San Nicolás de los Garza. When I was 20, I went to Mexico City to study international relations. I later won a scholarship to study public policy at Harvard. I then began an almost 14-year career in the public sector, with the Secretary of Education, the Secretary of Social Development, and at the Mexican Embassy in Washington. I worked at the Embassy for four years, and was present during the negotiations for the North American Free Trade Agreement. In December of 1994, President Zedillo named me as the Sub-Secretary of Foreign Relations. Later, in January of 1998, the President named me the official Director of the Treasury. I had the opportunity to work very closely with Luis Donaldo Colosio and Angel Gurría. At the beginning of 2001, I entered the private sector and worked with CEMEX for 5 years as Vice President of Communication. I am proud to work in a great global business of Mexican origin. CEMEX operates in 50 countries. In addition to my work with the company, I am a professor in the Graduate School of Public Administration and Public Politics of the TEC in Monterrey. I also do commentaries about international politics for the news station TV Monterrey, and I write a bi-weekly column for the editorial pages of El Norte. I am married and I have a daughter and two sons.

AF: And, why the blog?

JT: My blog allows me to make my ideas public. I am passionate about international issues. I have dedicated a good part of my life to studying and living the relations between Mexico and the United States. My blog gives me the opportunity to share what I think about the internal and external politics of Mexico with many readers. The advantage of the blog, as compared to other forms of mass media, is that I am able to continually update information that I have published. I believe that in the future quality blogs will substitute many other forms of communication.

AF: I’m reading an editorial by Miguel Angel Vargas in the newspaper El Norte with the title “Blogalization,” that, in fact, mentions your blog. Are we already in this epoch?

JT: Yes. The advance of information technology and communication has transformed everything. Politics will never be the same. Imagine the possibility that on the day of the next presidential election, on July 2, 2006, some blogs publish photos, videos and analysis of the election throughout the day, including forecasts of the electoral results based on personal interviews, before the authorities are able to do it. Blogs are not subject to regulation as are TV and radio. They can define the information agenda that informs the other media outlets. Blogs allow hundreds of citizens to become permanent reporters and analysts. Readers will have to discriminate afterward as to the quality of the information. But the freedom is there.

AF: Commentaries in the United States have said that blogs might replace newspapers. Is this possible?

JT: It’s possible. In fact, it’s already occurring. In one of my articles I wrote the story of “EPIC 2015″ about the disappearance of the New York Times in 10 years, due to the proliferation of internet outlets that are able to provide information in real time and with better segmentation according to readers’ interests.

AF: The “exponential” growth of technology went beyond the same idea. In your editorial “War for Internet,” we saw how much the blogosphere has changed in just a few years. Will the rise of blogs yield chaos rather than benefits? Do blogs require a “regulating” body?

JT: I don’t believe in bureaucracies. To me it seems that the free flow of information will lead to hierarchy based on quality. What will be very important is investment in the education of our citizens, and above all in our children, because they will be bombarded by all types of information throughout their lives. They need to develop a new ability to know how to distinguish among valuable information and garbage.

AF: How do you view the “blogs” in Mexico? In other countries people have referred to them as political tools, almost literary.

JT: There is still ample space for the development of blogs in Mexico. We are in the beginning stages. We have a long way to go.

AF: What is the situation of blogs in Nuevo León?

JT: Sometimes we are a bit ahead of the rest of the country. If we want to change our country and the metropolitan area of Monterrey into an international city of knowledge, we ought to invest more in the development of more professional and more serious communication. We have to work from primary school to the university.

AF: In your resume, you mention that in 1993 you worked with then Secretary of Social Development Luis Donaldo Colosio, and that you later collaborated with him as an assistant. What was it like to work with Colosio?

JT: It was a real privilege. I met Colosio while working at the Mexican Embassy in Washington when he was the President of the PRI. We developed a very good relationship. When he was named the Secretary of Social Development, he invited me to join his team, which I did in its last year. It was an experience without par. He was very demanding, untiring, and loyal to his boss and his collaborators. He had a very clear vision of what state policy should do for the country. I worked very closely with him and collaborated on the campaign for his candidacy for President of Mexico. After he was named as a candidate, I worked closely with him on his team formulating his strategy and rhetoric. The experience of sharing ideas with him and working on his proposal for the nation was one of the best moments of my professional life. I also cried when he lost. Colosio would have been a great President of Mexico.

AF: You have collaborated in a very active way with the government. Can you tell me your impressions about the current administration?

JT: The federal government arrived at a moment in which the citizens wanted change. Candidate Fox promised change, and the people believed him. Unfortunately, the great historic opportunity has been wasted. We came from an era of great expectations, in 2000, to an era of great frustrations today. Much of this has to do with naivety, ignorance, arrogance, and incompetence. Time will tell.

AF: I am a doctor and I’m interested in blogs only as a pastime, though I have been enriched by many sites with diverse themes. A few friends and I are in the process of forming a local community of bloggers here in Monterrey. I’ve seen sites that I didn’t know existed and I’ve met people who have developed the literary “I” in their writing. Would you recommend that people have a blog?

JT: Without a doubt. We all can have our own blog. They are very easy to make. They don’t require technological expertise. It’s enough to have a desire for self-expression.

AF: Do you believe that in the future blogs will be as numerous in Mexico as they are in other countries?

JT: I believe it’s a only question of time. New generations of Mexicans use this technology more all the time. But, I insist that all will depend on our capacity to improve education in Mexico.

AF: You are a professor of Technology at Monterrey. Are blogs already included in the curriculum?

JT: Yes. Blogs are being used more all the time. The young university students have greater awareness of the opportunities available to them as a result of blogs.

Hurricane Wilma Through Monterrey's Eyes

alan flores — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 22:57:54 +0000

Last week's theme among bloggers here in Monterrey, Mexico was hurricane Wilma. We have all kinds of point of views about the subject. Reading goleech, we have a very valid comparison between what happened in New Orleans and what we have at Cancun, Quintana Roo, and Chiapas because of hurricane Wilma. Goleech says:

We don't have to be negative [in our criticism], but don't you remember how hurricane Stan affected Chiapas? We keep reading that mexican soldiers in New Orleans at least used disposable masks… but we don`t see any in Chiapas.

Ruth tell us that we must remember what happened. She also brings to our attention the condition of Mayan archaeological sites; something we don't hear about in the news. Our presidente, Vicente Fox, asked the Federation for money to build this touristic site again.

Negatorium gave us a link to see some photos of hurricane Wilma that speaks for themselves. At our local newspaper El Norte, we read the opinion of three important people, that are trying to build “paradise” again: Pedro Joaquin Coldwell (ex Quintana Roo governor and ex-secretary of tourism), Carlos Rojas (senator), and Enrique Provencio (ex-member of SEMARNAT). They criticize Seguridad Pùblica (”Public Security”) for its very late response to the people's needs. They think there has to be a big investment to bring back to life all the touristic places. It'll take time. But as we saw at the Mexico city earthquake on september 19th 1985, the people join their efforts even if authorities just keep talking. They have to rebuild the city from dust.