2 years and 85.000 visits later

Welcome airship enthusiasts,
Airshipworld is a new Blog about anything Airship and nothing but Airships, if they are LTA or HTA doesn't matter, what matters is that we are wanting to bring the community together. This site should become the central hub for all Airship news, events, announcements, sightings and everything else of interest for the Airship community. In the next weeks there is going to be a lot happening, so stay tuned.

It was 2 years ago when I posted these lines and started this little experiment called "The Airshipworld Blog". Since then I have learned a lot about blogging, the airship industry and of course airships. I have met many great people and made contact to the Airship Association, the DGLR, IsoPolar and others. It is still hard to believe that 2 years ago no one in the community knew me. Thanks for letting me in and helping me to become a part of the community. I started with a simple Blogger blog template which was more or less suited for the Airshipworld Blog.
The template was nothing special but it was good enough to get the word out and to publish. With visitor numbers increasing it made sense to put up some ads to get a little kick back for my blogging work, and by the end of 2007 I had made enough money to get a full Domain with web space and all the bells and whistles someone could ask for. Airshipworld.info was born. In January 2008 we also did our first design refresh, moving away from the Blogger theme to a theme completely designed for Airshipworld.

This was how the blog looked ever since January 2008, visitor numbers grew fast to over 8000 visits a month in Summer 2008, this was probably also related to the many events that happened in 2008, like the Zeppelin NT #4 that was flying over London and then later transported to the US for Airship Ventures. Just look into the archives of 2008 it's crazy how much had happened, we even released our first Software the Gertler Series 58 Generator.
As the year came to a close I had to slow down a little with the blog but kept working on Airshipworld as much as my time permitted. End of February 2009 we were proud to announce the Airshipworld Event Calendar, which is a collaborative Calendar solely dedicated to capture Airship and Lighter-Than-Air events all around the world. We have many features planned, but are also looking for your contributions, to make the Calendar a central place for the airship community to contribute and find events.
Another big step forward in 2008 was that I attended two important Airship Events last year, the first one was the International Airship Convention in Friedrichshafen the other one was the Airship Association Annual Symposium. I was allowed to film the sessions of both events, so the video of all the sessions is captured and preserved for history. I am working with the Airship Association and the DGLR on how to publish the videos, it will take a while to work out everything in regards to copyrights and licensing but once we cracked that nut we should be able to launch a video portal for session videos from conferences.

For this year I will record the Sessions of the DGLR Workshop XI and plan on coming to the Airships to the Arctic Symposium in Calgary this fall. So there is lot's of material coming. If you have experience with publishing video on the internet both the legal and technical aspects please contact me any help is highly appreciated. We are also bringing you an upgraded layout for the Blog, that aligns with the layouts of the Forum and the Events Calendar and we are planing on providing more services, beyond the Blog and utilizing the Website Airshipworld.info more. I will still blog but am in desperate need for contributing editors, so if you are interested please send an email.
So now after 2 years and 85.000 visits all that's left to say is Happy Birthday Airshipworld.