The Story of New Zealand's Internet

Transcription

Robyn Gallagher – Writer/Content Producer, robyngallagher.com

“I didn’t really call it an online journal. There were the ‘journal girls’ and they were doing a slightly different thing to me. My writing was less personal and less like a journal through a date base. Mine was a bit more reflective or less specifically about me and more about society in general or pop culture. I called it ‘my website’ before the ‘blog’ word was around.

The first time I put a substantial piece of writing up on my website, I was terrified. It was absolutely frightening. I had the link to it. I had this big block of text and there were a couple of individual letters to it linked to the stuff I’d written and a friend of mine said to me, “Ah that was easy. I just looked at the HTML and figured out where it was”. I think I was really scared that somebody would say, “Oh that’s rubbish. Who do you think you are?”. But that never happened. And then people started saying to me. “I like that thing you wrote about coffee or the America’s Cup or whatever”. And that’s led to people saying to me, “I started my blog because I liked what you were doing”. It’s been good.”