An Introduction and Preface to More

I’m J.J. Toothman and I’m a NASA Web Dude. 

If you already know me, you probably know that I recently started working at NASA Ames Research Center as a Web Strategist.  If you don’t know me, read the post about this over on my personal blog as I wrote about what I’ll be doing at NASA Ames. This is my second stint working on improving the web experience at Ames.  There is still so much to be done.

For the past month, I’ve been getting ramped up with the current activities related to Web at Ames and around the rest of the agency.  I’ve also been spending some time thinking about the following question:

Do I really need to start another blog? 

[Still Thinking…] 

After all, I’ve already got a personal blog.  And a blog for freelancing business that I share with Holly Hagen.  And then there’s the photography blog I’ve been meaning to ramp up but has gotten trumped by the needs of my two young sons and my mobile posterous blog.  Then there’s that Red Sox blog that, well, let’s just say that the less than great start by my favorite baseball team has really disenchanted me from writing about them. ((This paragraph is really just a sly attempt to provide a bunch of related hyperlinks about me to help people get to know me better.))

But yes, despite all these other experiments and trials, I do thing the right move is to start another topical blog.  As I’ve been discovering, the topics of Gov 2.0, OpenGov, OpenNASA, etc. etc.  is a H-O-T space.  There is a lot of activity going on.   I previously sensed this when I was thinking about returning to NASA, but didn’t really grasp the sheer abundance of thinking and effort being put into these subjects by some excellent people.  Thus, needing my own place to reflect on these matters, communicate my own thoughts, and share my related activities… here I am.  Thought about doing this on my personal blog, but really that has become (or perhaps it always was) a friends and family communication blog sharing what I’m up to and, of course, lots of pictures of the two sons I share with my wife Keturah. 

A focused, niche blog seemed more appropriate.  And thus, the NASA Web Dude blog is born.

Stay tuned.