buckleyPLANET Turns 20

Today marks the 20th anniversary of buckleyPLANET.com, and I find myself reflecting on the journey that began on February 3rd, 2004. What started as “The Samaritan-Web Project,” a cornerstone of my doctoral plans focusing on the impacts of collaboration technology on teams both small and large that later became a non-profit, I moved to the buckleyPLANET domain later that year. This site evolved from a place to document and catalog the evolution of social networking platforms and collaboration tools into what has become, more or less, an extension of my brain. It’s where I capture what I see and learn and experience personally and share it with the community.

In the early days, buckleyPLANET was a repository for my observations and analyses of the burgeoning social networking platforms, many of which have since faded into the digital ether. It was a time of significant growth and maturity for social tools, with instant messaging becoming mainstream thanks to pioneers like ICQ and AOL Messenger, and later by MSN and Yahoo Messengers. These platforms laid the groundwork for the social media landscape we navigate today.

Reflecting on the past 20 years, I am grateful for the journey that buckleyPLANET has been on. From its inception as a project intertwined with my academic pursuits to helping me to become a recognized name in the analysis and documentation of collaboration technology, the evolution of this blog mirrors the very subject matter it covers: transformation, innovation, and the power of connectivity.

Of course, this past week was a little painful. As I shared on social media, I just went through the 3rd migration of this site in 20 years, moving from Azure to an external hoster to (hopefully) give me a serious performance boost. As I preach with SharePoint migrations, moving the database was the easy part. Reconnecting everything, cleaning up plugins and other add-ons, and making sure external links still worked were not as effortless as I had hoped. Thanks to people sharing their experiences (and a couple of lines of code) I was able to get everything back online and working as intended after a 6.5-hour marathon call (well, two calls) with support.

As I look to the future, I am excited to continue exploring the evolving landscape of collaboration technologies, social networking, and their impacts on our personal and professional lives through buckleyPLANET.com, my YouTube channel, the CollabTalk Podcast, and my various online and offline activities. For those keeping score, I just wrapped up my 29th month of daily blog posts (PLUS content for work) and am well on my way to my goal of 1000 posts in 1000 days. My content journey of the past two decades has been nothing short of remarkable, and I am eager to see where the next 20 years will take us.

Thank you to all who have followed, contributed to, and engaged with buckleyPLANET over the years. Your support and interaction have been pivotal to the blog’s success. Here’s to continuing the journey together, exploring the ever-changing world of technology and its impact on our connections and collaborations.

To the next 20 years – may they be as enlightening, challenging, and rewarding as the last!