Five years ago today, I was living in Los Angeles, working at the now defunct Media Revolution, producing a site for Honda motorcycle enthusiasts when I decided to start a blog.

Initially my blog was merely a place for me to put links to interesting, funny or political sites and media I liked. I did this instead of annoying my friends with group emails. Here is my first month of content. Pretty benign.

My blog stayed that way for four and a half years until April of last year when a few people asked me why I don’t write about social media and banking topics. They pointed out that many of the people writing about such things worked at vendors and not on the client side. So on April 3rd of 2007 I posted that I was taking a a new direction, and would be writing about the intersection of social media, online branding and the world of banking.

What I never could have predicted was how personally transformative the experience would be. The online community of FI bloggers I have joined is amazing. Insightful, supportive, funny and helpful. I have grown to admire, respect and lean on these fine folks and consider them to be an important part of the social fabric of my life (most of them are in the “my peers” section on the sidebar of my blog’s homepage). I am addicted to speaking at conferences now, partly because it’s the best chance to see these great people in person from time to time.

Many of these people are connected to me via LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, my personal tripod of social media utilities.

Then in July, Jim Bruene who created NetBanker, one of the best and brightest blogs dealing with the online world of FIs asked me to guest blog on his site, which reaches thousands and thousands of people in the industry. I nervously started writing for him in July of last year. I was able to start some healthy discussion about issues around social media in the world of finance, and as a result met more great people whom I otherwise wouldn’t have known.

The final part of the transformation happened in November when I used my blog as a place to ask for help from my readers and subscribers with my upcoming Net.Finance NY presentation. I received several extraordinarily helpful comments from others in the industry, and this input made my presentation exponentially better. I am excited to deliver it later this month.

I’m excited to see what 2008 holds in store for our community of industry bloggers. I, for one, am very optimistic. See you on the circuit…