The Future of the EMSBlogs.com Network

Five years ago tomorrow I brought what would become the EMSBlogs.com Network online. The start was a bit rough, but after a few days pounding away I was happy to announce on August 9, 2010 that it was officially in Beta… and then I promptly left and went to Celebration V in Orlando Florida because I am the absolute BEST planner ever!!!

/sarcasm

Five years is a long time, especially in blog years. Five years for a network? It’s darn near ancient… but yet it isn’t. This is a blog post that I imagined writing one day. Most versions of it concluded that the blogosphere would live on without us, that EMS as a profession and an industry would continue to evolve minus this little corner of its universe, and that you’d be able to find me in the other places I tend to frequent before bidding everyone a tearful farewell.

This version is actually vastly different than what I imagined for there will be no swan song sung here today.

Over the next few weeks the EMSBlogs.com Network will be joining other blogs under another network. Without boring you all to death with details, it boils down to it being about time… or more specifically the lack of it.

When I first started the network I had enough free time to provide the support and help needed to get it started, get new bloggers onboard as well as up and running, maintain the site, and ensure the platform was stable. Over the years we’ve had a slew of brute-force attacks, spambot sieges, and a few successful hacks that have required some relatively intense (for someone who’s primary job is not in IT) back-end work. It worked out, and while there were issues I was usually able to resolve them in 36-48 hours from the start.

Since the day I started this network, there has been interest in it from others. Yet I felt very strongly about two things. The network needed someone to understand the importance of the work bloggers do and in understanding that needed to remain as independent voices from the traditional EMS trade media. If it wasn’t one thing, it would be the other and besides… why? I had the time to do it and everything was going pretty swell.

Last year I unexpectedly lost a lot of that free time. My ability to not only provide support but to actively blog diminished immensely. Something that would have taken a day now takes around a month. This is no way to have a blog network run, and definitely not the way I wanted this blog network to be. I strove from day one to be better than the other blog networks in support, content, and in revenue sharing with the bloggers. Lately I was finding it hard to say that we were better than the rest through no one’s fault but my own.

Allow me right now to say THANK YOU to all the bloggers who have ever blogged here and all the readers who have ever wandered across us.

So when the opportunity appeared again to have someone else take over the technical aspects and the administration end of the blog network… well… I took it. I took it for three reasons:

1. This was something I could no longer do
2. The people taking over understand the importance of the work we do
3. The blogs would remain independent of the traditional trade media and continue as the upstart new media outlet it was originally intended to be with the focus remaining on EMS

I know you’re probably wondering what this all means to you, beloved reader. It actually means very little other than the fact that there may be a day you won’t see us… but we’ll be back. We’ll have fresh themes, prettier pictures, and even more dynamic content that will be designed with the mobile setting in mind. All the content you will read continues to be the opinions and intellectual property of the individual bloggers. Not much will change… except there will be a new header because…

Stay tuned… it’s gonna be interesting.

Promise.