My friend and business associate Yvonne Divita over at Lip-Sticking has tagged me to let you all know "5 Reasons Why I Blog."  It's my first opportunity to participate in this now familiar meme that I've seen around the blogosphere. It's good for "business" and I'd love to share why I do this with my readers, so let's get going:

1. I blog because I've always been about making connections between people and information that they find of interest or need to better their lives. That's one of my biggest strengths at the day job and a big part of what drove me into the law and publishing.  The development of blogs and other social media has fascinated me as it gave us mere mortals tools and the opportunity to publish to the world,  and share the connections we make with others.
2. As a result of blogging, I realize that one of the reasons I blog is the connections it helps me make WITH people, real people in the real world, whom I likely never would have met, much less formed a relationship.  Those who have read these pages for a while have first hand knowledge of these connections.  If I didn't blog, I would never had much of an opportunity to meet Jimmie Highsmith Jr. and Wycliffe Gordon, much less see them record tracks for Jimmie's new album, other than going up after a gig to lamely say "great set!" If I didn't blog, I wouldn't have met Seth and Ken, my Rochester International Jazz Festival blogging compadres (and others the links to whom are or will be revealed in these pages).  Also, I wouldn't know a number of those in the jazz music scene here.
3. I blog because I find this tool and reading the blogs of others a wonderful way to find information that feeds  my wide universe of interests, of which jazz is only one, and to expand my mind in ways I couldn't have imagined. By reading blogs that interest me and see who they are reading, I'm  building a network of reliable sources of information that sustain my work and my everyday life.
4. I blog because it gives me a platform to highlight my skills and build an understanding of how blogs can meet the needs of clients and potential clients of the new business in which my wife and I are engaged, as well as the business of our partners.
5. I blog because it allows me to share my love of jazz and live music, and to use the skills I have to promote it here in Rochester, a city that I'm growing more attached to since arriving in 2002 from Chicago.  It allows me to share information I find out on the Internet relating to jazz with people here and throughout the world (I get a number of hits from around and outside the US).

Plus, it's fun!  Now's the time in all good "tag" posts to say "Tag. . . you're it!" to Ken, Seth, Annie, and  Peter.  You're on....