I dislike self-congratulatory backslapping like everyone else, but for posterity’s sake, here are some things that have happened in as non a self-laudatory fashion as possible.

* I’m joining Problogger as a weekly columnist:It seems like I was well received over at Problogger.net, and my weekly column looks to be part of Darren’s plans for some big changes in 2006 for PB. I’ll be focusing my column on strategic level issues around blogging, marketing, or whatever my mind can drum up with on wednesday nights (my column will be published on Thursdays, GST-5). For example, I was going to blog about “how to brand your blog”, but it turned out to be an unreadable mess. Maybe I’ll sharpen it up for this week’s column.

* SearchEngineWatch thinks I’m one of the 10 most influential “scribblers” in search: Hilarious, I know. But getting mentioned in the same sentence as the USA Today, the New York Times, and Nick Carr of Rough Type is somewhat heady … until you mention how they created that list. Seems liked they used NewsTrust to find a bunch of articles on “Search”, and lo and behold, a post I wrote some time ago on the “Corruption of the New Media and the “New” New Media Literacy” that was highly “trusted” by … like, 5-6 people. You know what? I like NewsTrust, because its a system that’s like Digg — you submit news for people to see — except that it rates the news bits based on how much you trust the piece. Problem with the SearchEngineWatch piece, as flattering as it was, is that at such low numbers of people participating it can skew the results. Also? You can’t delete a “trust” ranking … for fun, I decided to give myself five stars, and lo and behold, I couldn’t delete it.

* Baron VC thinks I’m Rich: Or, rather, believes, quite rightly, that the rich get richer, and the poor … well, don’t. And specifically, he’s talking about how success leads to more success, in a positive feed back loop. And it leads to a nice lengthy piece an blogging about blogging. Well, as much as it tweaks my egalitarian sensibilities, of course he’s right. People ask me all the time “did Darren paid you for your week?” And to that I said, “of course not, it was a volunteer position. And that’s just fine”. Because, I saw it as an opportunity to speak to a larger audience on a topic I rarely blog about. Which, going back to point one, led me to a regular column. Which is nice.

When you’re starting out in anything (as I view myself), and you’ve got no history, no real prior credibility, and no celebrity of any sort, I think you’ve got to do what it takes to create that kind of history and credibility for yourself. Especially if it means you’re doing it for free, or you’re doing it “pro bono”. And no, I don’t mean doing comp work without any promise of getting published (for all of you designers out there, you might know what I mean), but actually offering your services, whether they be blogging, or what not, for the exposure. Sure, opportunity may knock from time to time, but you’ve got to make as many doors for that to happen.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled snarky programming. ;)