We were off line for a few hours today while some of us were asleep and others were in transit. We ran into our ISP's bandwidth limit much sooner than expected. Funny how exponential growth can surprise you, even when you're thinking about it all the time. Thanks to everyone who Skyped us; we really appreciate your support.

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Last week I arrived in the UK for some business and pleasure. Julian Bond at Ecademy had also heard I was coming over, so arranged for me to present at their monthly London meeting. I combined two of my favorite current topics. What's your Skype strategy? and What's your presence strategy? It was a fun evening. I was up before Cory Doctorow, a wonderful speaker. Before the event we traded notes with Penny Power, who told me the real story of how Ecademy was founded. Cory's EFF presentation was also so relevant to all us going forward. The abuse of powers around the recording industry are likely to be nothing when compared with telephony as the full disruptive power of VoIP hits. It was interested to see the parallels and to consider what strategies are required so "users" - people in the streets really get it and care. My talk asked "What's your presence strategy?

After the session we had a very yacky dinner with Thomas and Penny, along with Julian Bond and Andrew Widley. Thomas kept priming the pump and both Julian and I fed it with Skype possibilities. By the time he dropped me off I know I had really wound him up. The results were clear the next day. Thomas started a SkypeClub at Ecademy. I think quite a few from the session joined. [Ed. 281 as of 7 June] Why? I believe I found the stories that enabled those that were there to see we weren't talking about telephony anymore. That we were talking about more efficient ways to do business, to add value to conversations and still appreciate a social side.

If you are not familiar with Ecademy it is one of the oldest business networking sites. With members around the world they are concentrated in Britain. There have been 88 London monthly meeting and they now run in many more centers.

Thanks again Thomas and Penny for making we feel so welcome. I'll link to the video when available.

In short, Stuart Henshall.

I met Stuart on the metablogging circuit a few years ago and we hit it off. If you haven't met him, he's tall. Towering. But he's also suave with a mild drawl and a relaxed corporate finish. Stuart and I started blogging about the then-new Skype about two years' ago. We egged each other on, trying to peel away the layers of ideas embodied by Skype the software, the network, the people. I pulled off to work pretty much full time on the 2004 presidential election and, eighteen months later, came up for air. This winter when Stuart launched Skype Journal, I was shocked. Because it was the obvious move and Stuart was clearly the perfect person to do it.

Stuart is a critical thinker, an insightful writer, and natural blogger. He sounds like his blog posts. He's a skilled and agile facilitator, great with small groups. His depth in marketing, knowledge management, IT and telecom, and enterprise strategy are an excellent fit for Skype Journal. His two year's of writing about things Skype is evidence of his persistence and focus. He's a family man, committed to his own work-life balance; dozens of our meetings are cut short for time at home. And he has an honesty and personal integrity that make it easy to do business and be friends, even in difficult situations.

Why this mash note? You should know a little more about the man behind the scenes.

And I really haven't told Stuart to his face how much I appreciate the chance to be part of this new venture. Thanks, Stuart.

Stuart's in London this week. If you see him, pour him a pint for me.

Has anyone else had trouble commenting? I had a problem today, I couldn't comment on the comments left on Skype Journal as it automatically referred my post to http://dsbl.org/listing?67.180.17.83 a DSDB distributed sender blackhole list. Apparently, this is a problem with my service provider Comcast and not the Skype Journal. Although I wonder if it is also something to do with MT-Blacklist the spam filter that is installed. If you have had trouble and had a similar and unexpected "rejection" could you let me know. Thanks.

One month today! Thank you for your support, comments, trackbacks and help on developing the Skype Journal. We are enjoying it and getting a buzz from the rapid growth and learning curve we are on. So how are we doing? We had 5,461 hits yesterday served over 12,000 pages and now exceed 40,000 hits per day and 1,000,000 per month. I pulled this chart from Alexa. Is this good or bad? It's not big blog stuff yet. Still from our perspective it feels good, and the growth trend is up.

Our focus remains on building traffic keeping it interesting and reaching Skypers. Phil Wolff joined Bill and I during the month adding another perspective and we will be adding others.

We also get the inquires; "How does Skype Journal make money?

I could do with some help or suggestions from Safari readers. This blog renders fine in Firefox (everyone should use it) and IE, but alas many of my favorite Safari readers will have problems with the right column. Those little drop down links seem to be the problem. Help gladly and solutions gladly accepted! Otherwise it will be "try something else" next week.

Stuart has a knack for getting new people into blogging. He just IM’d me with the title Skypeosphere. While yesterday I posted about the stars, he says it is really the Skypeophere we want to help evolve. Well I’m still coming to grips with the blogosphere and I’m excited to be part of this exciting new venture. “The Skype Journal”. I am thrilled, flattered and excited about the possibilities this vehicle provides the Skype Community. I feel lucky to be a part of it.

I began exploring Skype options and opportunities when Skype was in diapers six weeks after birth. My first impressions formed back in 2003 haven’t changed: Skype will create a revolution in how we communicate and do our work. I felt the return of the same “heady” feelings I had back in the late 70’s and early 80’s participating in the Personal Computer revolution. I just had to be part of this Skype revolution too.

When I began to think seriously about turning an interest in Skype into a more focused blog I immediately began thinking about who I could collaborate with, and who would be committed to the Skype community.

I’m delighted that Bill Campbell is joining me in building the Skype Journal. Bill and I bridge two worlds of Skype, the forum and developer world and the blog world. Bill has done as much technical testing on Skype as anyone. Other than a few of the Skype programmers there is no-one more knowledgeable. Together