Who are the readers of this blog?

The assignment for today in the Blogging 101 course is this: Publish a post you’d like your ideal audience member to read, and include a new-to-you element in it.

Ideal audience member? I cannot define an ideal reader any more than I could define a perfect friend. In friendship I offer my hand and respect. I cannot shape a friend and I cannot mold my audience. I can only try to find an audience for the topics I cover. Even that is fraught with uncertainty.

Since I have a number of interests I also have a number of blogs. To “guide” my audience I also have several “gateways”. Café Ludwig, where you are now, is one of them. It is like a transit terminal, a place where you find your connection to a destination. Such a place should be efficient and clean. The appearance of Café Ludwig is intentionally almost sterile. All you see is “destinations”. Click on an image or menu item and you are whisked to that blog or website.

Speed and efficiency is all that matters. There is no waiting for a plane or train on the Internet, so there are no places to idle some time away. Except for this one corner, Ludwig’s Ramblings. It is meant to be like a little real café where you sit with a friend and chat.

Who would come here? Who would even find it? I have conducted an experiment for a number of years. On the menus of my gateway sites I included a “News” link that would take visitors to a blog somewhat like this one (if you are determined it is still there, just two clicks away). I have carefully checked the number of visits. Essentially nobody stumbled in. Giving the destination the name Ludwig’s Ramblings might perk the interest of a few passers-by. So I can be fairly confident that only personal friends will frequent this blog, friends whom I have met at other places, other blogs, and who have accepted my invitation to come here for a chat, to see what I am rambling about today.

You, who are reading this, obviously followed such an invitation. I extend it to all my fellow participants in the Blogging 101 course. I hope that some lasting friendships will come of this. And thus, you may be that reader, that “ideal audience member”. Maybe our ideas mesh, maybe we share some common interests.

My ramblings here will range over my interests, hobbies, experiences. Photography and art, computing and computers, science and technology, those are the topics of my world. I believe in freely sharing, in respecting others’ opinions and views.

Some of the major topics important to people that shape and divide our world are not appropriate here except for one: the freedom to honestly express oneself. Intolerance I cannot an will not respect.

So on this anniversary of that tragic assault on freedom of expression in Paris, I proudly stand with those who yearn for tolerance, equality, and respect. The featured image above I published a year ago and I repeat it here.

For a “new o me element” to include I had to search far and wide as I have been blogging for a long time and have taken advantage of most tools and features. What I have rarely done, and not so far on this blog is to connect outward to others. Here is a link to a delightful experience of new-comers to China trying to discover the ways and routines of daily live.

Click the image above or here: Adventures in Grocery Shopping.

Michelle and Paul are dear friends and I have their permission to share this post.

.:.

© 2016 Ludwig Keck