As we continue to build the Out Front Blog, we’re trying to take advantage of opportunities to build community around the blog and boost dialogue and follow-up. Earlier this summer, we added a Comments feature to the right-hand column. Last week, we added two new features: we’re now on Twitter and we have a Facebook group.

Thanks to the Twitter feature Eddy added (check out the upper right hand corner of this blog or look for outfrontblog on Twitter), we’ll now be able to share more information and offer a bit more news items on gay and lesbian communications breaking news relevant to our mission to focus on these often underreported issues. 

Our Facebook group (Out Front Blog for those on Facebook) will allow us to expand our reach and encourage greater dialogue via a new channel. We’re going to try to keep our group page updated with news on recent posts and other information and we invite you to join us and share your thoughts with us on Facebook as well as in the Comments here.

We know we still have work to do, so we can’t quite claim Web 2.0 status yet – more like Web 1.5. But we’re working on it and hope you appreciate and enjoy our new features. Of course, if you have suggestions for further blog improvements (Del.icio.us anyone?), please let us know.

Blogs are about conversation. Ideally, we write about things that you are interested in and you offer your comments back to us. Sometimes, that’s exactly what happens.

We often ask for comments in our posts. And we try to be responsive in following up to your comments when you offer them. 

Now, at the suggestion of a reader, we’ve added a “Recent Comments” section to the blog to help highlight your comments and, hopefully, spur you to offer more. We want to engage you in an interactive conversation about gay and lesbian communications.

So, check out the “Recent Comments” links in the right hand column – right below Recent Posts and right above Q&A. 

We look forward to hearing what even more of you have to say.

It’s been a year of change for Out Front Blog: we’ve begun podcasting, featured Q&As with community icons like Billie Jean King and added new voices to the blog. That change continues with the departure of two of our contributing bloggers and the addition of two new contributing bloggers.

Sadly, we’ve lost Patricia Archambault and Jon Garbo to new jobs. We’ve greatly enjoyed their unique points of view and their individual eloquence and will miss their continued contributions to this blog. We’re not going to miss their previous posts, however. In fact, we’re going to make a change to our blogger list to preserve them with the addition of a new “Former Contributors” category to the left-hand column of this blog. We’ll move Patricia, Jon and Mark Senak to this listing in the coming weeks so that we can keep their blog posts up but avoid any confusion about who is blogging now and in the future. 

Fortunately, sad changes often have a silver lining. In fact, the departure of two of our colleagues presents an opportunity to add two new voices to the blogging team. And we’ve found two additional distinctive voices to join us here in our little corner of cyberspace. I’m pleased to announce that our colleagues Kim West and Laura Nguyen will soon join us on the Out Front Blog. Kim and Laura are both FH colleagues from our Kansas City office. Kim is an acknowledged consumer marketing expert with two decades of diverse communications experience. Laura is an up-and-coming communicator who speaks Vietnamese and brings another youthful voice to the Out Front Blog as well as the perspective of a native Midwesterner. Stay tuned for Kim and Laura’s debut posts in December.

If you’d like to offer your own goodbyes or welcomes to our contributors, please feel free to post a comment below. We look forward to hearing from you as we continue to grow and change.

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost one year since we launched the Out Front Blog. In that time our team has learned a great deal about digital communications and about each other as well as the world around us. To celebrate our first anniversary in the blogosphere and mark the occasion appropriately, we’ve decided to share a bit more of ourselves. Over the next week (beginning today, and running through next Friday), we will share our thoughts and perspectives on what we’ve learned/realized/experienced in the last 365 days of working on this blog.

I’ve really enjoyed working on the Out Front Blog over the past year. The primary thing I’ve learned is that I still have a lot to learn about the blogosphere. For each new aspect I’ve grown to understand, I have realized that there are several other aspects of our work online that I’m just beginning to grasp. It’s a constant learning experience. That said, here are a few of the things I have figured out so far:

• People like being asked to share their insights: I have really enjoyed conducting Q&As with people like Billie Jean King, Neil Giuliano, Eric Marcus, Joy Silver, Jody Huckaby and many others. We will have several more interesting additions to this list later this year with representatives of national organizations and media outlets on tap for this fall and winter.
• The blogosphere can be pretty welcoming if you make an effort to reach out to blogger colleagues: I’ve been impressed (and kind of flattered) by the kindness, interest and engagement we’ve had from bloggers and Web experts like Nina Smith of Queercents, Dana Rudolph of Mombian, Sean Bugg, and Joe LaMuraglia of Gaywheels.com. 
• A diversity of voices leads to a diversity of opinions and a much richer communications experience: We launched the site with a great line-up of gay male voices; one of the things I’ve been most excited about in the development of this blog over the past year has been the addition of our lesbian colleagues Patricia Archambault and Ivette Lopez as contributors to the Out Front Blog, bringing with them a Canadian and a Hispanic perspective, respectively. I look forward to much more insight from both of them – and from the entire team – as we continue this journey together. 

Next week, Jon, Eddy, Steve and Peter will share their views and we will feature a special guest blogger as well. Stay tuned. In the meantime, let us know what you’ve learned in the past year from reading our blog and interacting with all of us. We look forward to your comments.