This is the 500th blog post of Connecting People!!! I remember the first post as a result of Pat Matthews telling me what blogging was all about nearly 4 years ago. Thank you Pat!

The original focus was to help connect young professionals in the RNR with social and professional opportunities. However, other topics and uses for the blog emerged over time. Ed Burghard recently asked me to be a guest blogger for his site in which I explain how we used social media in the economic development industry. I think this post captures our overall efforts of using social media.

Additionally, we have the pleasure and honor to be a weekly contributor to Hankdshake 2.0 – the Tech Crunch of the RNR -  in a feature called Connecting People in the RNR. Thanks to Anne for her interest and passion.

With the emergence of micro-blogging sites such as Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/stuartmease), there may be less people committed to a traditional blog over the long haul, but we will continue to use this site as the landing site as we plan more updates and bells and whistles.

Finally, thanks to the countless number of people who have interacted with us about these topics. I see we are now over 100 subscribers, not sure what that means, but that is the most we have ever had.  Thank you for contributing.