As I type this I am one of the lucky ones in my town to have electricity and running water. Our phone lines are down as is the internet connection. As we live outside the town, our power supply comes in from a different direction and wasn’t affected by the storm damage. We have our own well, so don’t rely on the public mains water supply.  The phone I can live without. But the Internet! Noooooo, don’t take my connection to the World away from me! I can’t check my emails, Facebook, Twitter, update websites or do anything online.

So I wondered what will I do, tidy the office or write a new blog post? A quick look around the office settled that one quite quickly! You the lucky reader get to benefit too from my decision, unless of course you decide to visit my office.

It’s a perfect excuse for me to update my blog which has been gathering dust for a while now (Ok, it’s not exactly crazy as the title would suggest, but I couldn’t think of any other title). I’m not going to be writing anything earth shattering in this post, it’s more of a kind of yawn and stretch to wake myself up and let you know that I’m going to be a bit more active here. I’ll be writing more about community resilience, the sharing economy, food and energy solutions and any awesome stuff I come across related to collaboration and co-operation. This is the stuff that is being done by people and communities throughout the World who have realised they need to work together to accomplish great things and not to rely solely on governments to sort out the economic mess we find ourselves in.

I’ll probably write a bit also about my latest ideas and new business ventures. This is not to put myself on a pedestal or say ‘look how great I am’, but more to organise my thoughts and also to hold myself accountable for what I might say I will do. There’s nothing like writing your thoughts and ideas down to get them organised. And if I tell you I’m going to do something, then I’ve got to go ahead and do it don’t I. See what I did there? Now I’m going to have to start writing more! It’s also said the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else, so get ready to learn!

For years lovers of the Internet and Social Media have predicted the death of print media. It is true that sales of magazines and newspapers have declined Worldwide along with the advertising revenue which accompanies them. I don’t accept for a minute however that print media will soon be extinguished anymore than ‘video killed the radio star‘. Yes, things will have to be done differently by magazine and newspaper publishers. Some will survive and thrive and others will just die, the same as they did before the Internet and in other industries.

Anyhow, this subjects warrants a much longer post than I currently have time to write, but I will come back to it. This post has been prompted by a campaign that has begun in the US by 5 leading magazine publishers who have teamed together promoting magazines and the power of print. Below is their ‘Good News’ celebration video. What do you think? Is print dead or does it have a future?

And if you want something else to Tweet about, here’s another video

Twenty Tweetable Truths about Magazines