Happy Birthday, Badger Blog Alliance

Today is the Badger Blog Alliance's 1st birthday. It was one year ago that this humble post went up here. And it stayed up, all cold and lonely, for a month without any other posts.

Here's a little BBA history, if you are interested. I had been watching the Minnesota blogs with great interest. It seemed like the Minnesota blogs were really kicking our tails here in Wisconsin, and the biggest and the baddest of the Minnesota blogs were aligned in what they called "The Northern Alliance." I wanted something like that for Wisconsin, but I only knew of a handful of Wisconsin blogs. I posted on the idea at Jiblog, and after exchanging emails with a few of the founding members of the BBA, Lucas, Blog General, and Drew, we decided to get something going under the title Badger Blog Alliance. And that's where things stood for a month.

In January, things started to get rolling a little bit. A few posts were made, some links went up, and the Badger Blog Alliance, with its old burgundy and pink format, was off to a crawl. I went off to California for a 10 day business trip pleased that we had a start, but not exactly sure how we would take it to another level. And then there was a perfect blog storm.

I was working in California, and one night in my hotel room I was scanning through blogs. Blog General had posted that he was going to be on Charlie Sykes' show on 620 WTMJ, along with Patrick, Owen, Kevin, Sean, and Badger Pundit, to do a segment on blogging. That was the spark the BBA needed. The show created a lot of buzz amongst Wisconsin's conservative blogs, and after a few emails were exchange, Patrick, Owen, Kevin, Sean, Mary Eileen, and Chris agreed to join us here over the course of the month.

This whole BBA thing was still a little shaky, though. We had posting members, but I hadn't really given anyone a sense of purpose. A story came about the really solidified this blog as a place that had a snowball's chance of lasting: The voter fraud story. Wisconsin had a major story that all fo the Wisconsin blogs and some of the nationals were talking about, and the Badger Blog Alliance began to feel like it had a purpose. With the voter fraud story, the BBA got an Instalanche (I believe from one of Kevin's posts), and the rest is history.

There is a lot of thanking to do, so I am going to try to do so as effeciently as possible. First, I'd like to thank Drew, Lucas, and Blog General. Without the three of you, this never would have even started up. Thank you to Charlie Sykes for being a huge supporter of Wisconsin blogs. Without that segment on the Wisconsin blogosphere, we probably never would have coalesced into the self aware entity that we are today. Thank you also to Kevin, Patrick, Owen, Sean, Chris, and Mary Eileen. Their joining the BBA in January gave it some heft. We should all thank Greg Borowski for his terrific work on the voter fraud stories. Glenn Reynolds, even though I am hard on him sometimes at my own blog, deserves thanks for giving us that first huge burst of traffic. Thank you to all of the BBA members who have joined over the course of the year, because you all really round the site out. Thanks to all of the Wisconsin bloggers who aren't posting members of the BBA, because you've had a great year and made the Wisconsin blogosphere and the BBA a much more lively place. And most of all, thank you to all of our readers. Without you, none of these previous thank you's would be possible.

Here's to a great year for the Wisconsin blogosphere, and to an even better 2006.