Today I’ll take you behind the dashboard. Not one of a plane, but the dashboard of this blog. Even with a motto aw wide as “General Aviation and Aviation in General”, producing one post a day, and managing this blog is not always an easy task. This post is also an occasion to show how I get in touch with the flying community.

My daily blogging cycle always start by reading your comments, or e-mails you send me (see the “About me” page if you want to contact me). They are the true fuel of this blog, as I don’t want it to be a one-way communication medium. This blog is for me a way to exchange and share experiences, so I really appreciate all feed-back you give and I’m always glad to answer your questions.

After answering comments and e-mails, I check the flying news from several websites: manufacturers, authorities, associations, clubs, airlines. Any super-hot topic can lead to a post out of the normal schedule (daily, 8pm CET), but I anyway try to build a consolidated view before pressing the “Publish” button. I also try to notify important things via my Twitter feed.

I also use Google reader to follow a few dozen feeds: other blogs, news sites, newspapers, and so on. I also consult blogs aggregators, like BloggingPilots, and I participate in handful of pilot formus, in both French and English language.

My other sources of inspiration are obviously my daily work, feed-back from friends, and my own experience, not to mention several aviation newspapers, and my photo library. When a post is not urgent, I use to keep it in my “pipe” for a couple of days, so that I can review it before it’s published. I also have a reserve of posts that can be published at any time, to manage lack of inspiration, vacation, or busier periods.

Another important part of the work is to find partners, and establish relations with other bloggers, like for the series comparing flying in US and Europe I just started with Jason Miller, the editor of www.vectorstofinal.com. If you are interested in such things, or want to write a guest post, and share some experience, please contact me.

As a blogger, I also spend a lot of time reading and commenting on other blogs, and to find some blog promotion tools, like directories, and so on. By the way, any link to my blog is appreciated.

Finally, keeping the whole thing running and evolving requires some work, even if it’s not daily. I broken all of it a couple of times in the past (isn’t, Cliff ?), but now I use a test installation for this purpose. I’m currently working on new design and content, which I’ll implement when I’ll upgrade to Wordpress 2.5. If you’ve an idea, or suggestion, it’s time to send it to me, per e-mail or comment.

All of this takes time, and I thank my wife a LOT for her patience. I don’t log the time spent blogging, but I guess that after one year, I probably spent more time blogging than flying. It’s also a good substitute for the bad weather and non flying times, and I see that as a good action towards the flying community, as an attempt to make it more lively.

I hope you enjoyed this quick glance behind the scene, and if you’re a techie and want more details, here is my setup: iMac 24” @2.4GHz, 2GB RAM, I use WordPress hosted by infomaniak, in Switzerland, and do my editing online. I tried ecto, months ago, but I’m not fan. I have a MacBook as spare computer, which I sometimes use to blog from the garden. May be Santa will bring me a MacBookAir with solid state hard disk.

See you tomorrow for more blogging on “General Aviation, and Aviation in General”.