What's another year?
The Diary celebrates its first birthday today, reason enough to look back and see what, if anything, we have achieved.
It was partly an experiment, partly me wanting to get back to my roots in some way. My 'day job' journalism today is totally focussed on things motoring, sometimes technical, sometimes automotive business, sometimes motor industry people. All three together, actually, much of the time.
All of it interesting, but all of it taking me outside Kilcullen, having no relationship with the town where I grew up.
As I've said to a few people, I needed a reason to 'walk down the street and look at the notices in the windows'.
As I grew up in Kilcullen, it went through periods of stagnation and periods of change, and I've lived through more than six decades of it, child and man. It was always a town of great stories, and even though it was small it made waves outside itself far bigger than might be expected. Just a few examples: in boxing we produced an Olympic contender and a successful professional as well as a very sound reputation at amateur and schoolboy level across the country.
In cycling we had Tom Berney and Liam Baxter in different generations. In racing we had world-class jockeys and trainers in and around the village.
In drama we were respected as a force to be reckoned with in the amateur circuit across the island. And 'built in' to the village we had a range of individuals at every level who brightened the community's days and nights, and in a number of cases pushed out the envelope in social and business capacities to produce virtual tsunamis far from the local banks of the Liffey.
Think 'Capers' and John Brady; think 'Lord Mayor Elections' and Jim Collins with Michael Lambe; think my Dad, Jim Byrne of the Hideout that became an international byword pub; think Paddy Mitchell and his dustcart, Pat Dunlea and his determination that whatever he personally achieved, Kilcullen should be the real winner; my brother, dead too young, Des Byrne, who loved people and made music; Paddy Nugent and KDA, and so many more that there's no point in trying to make a complete collection here.
I grew up with all that as the background in the painting of my own life. And for many years -- even though I remained living here -- since my work became unrelated to Kilcullen, I missed all that kind of thing.
So I started the Diary to connect me again with the place I am fourth generation in. Also, because my involvement with the Internet goes back to before it became the magical world wide web which we now almost take for granted, I wanted to use that technology to see if it could be used to link the 'old' and 'new' Kilcullens of today, at least in a small way.
In a way it was deja vu: when Fr Cathal Price established The Bridge some thirty-five years ago for similar reasons, I got involved early. Indeed, I cut my journalistic teeth on The Bridge and it was the experience gained there that was the Zip firelighter of my subsequent career in every aspect of journalism.
So I had the skills. Well, some of them. I can write. I've been a photographer for some three decades. I'm no stranger to media design. And a computer and its very advanced software in the publishing sense is as easy for me to use as a hammer is to a carpenter.
It should also be said that in Internet terms, my longtime colleague Trish Whelan and I had for five years provided the first (and so far only) county news service on the 'net, in the form of KNN. We had to give that up when our business interests took increasing demands on our time.
So I took the KNN idea to 'micro' level, and community news back to the smallest part of the community.
What's happened since? With in excess of some 35,000 impressions since we kicked off a year ago, there are a great number of people reading the Diary. About 7 percent of them are Kilcullen people living abroad, the balance are all local loggers-in.
We have regulars from countries like New Zealand, Australia, many states in the USA, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Taiwan, a variety of eastern european countries, Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, parts of the UK. But most from Ireland itself.
The vast bulk of vistors are repeaters. There's no reason for them to come back except that they have a direct connection with Kilcullen, because all of what we publish has to do with the town and its hinterland, and the people in both.
At local radio and county newspaper level, Kilcullen is not well served in the reporting of the amount of stuff that's going on here. That's undertandable to a degree, as they must concentrate on the population centres which bring them their revenue. The Diary is missing stuff too, but we're getting an awful lot more out.
Over the year we have published in total words terms the equivalent of a good-sized book about Kilcullen. We've used around a thousand photographs. We've experimented with audio -- and will be doing much more of that. And we've attracted a small cohort of other contributors.
We have covered local controversies, reported public meetings, recorded the sad passing of quite a few people from our community, some of them very close to me.
We have tried to show some of us what others of us are doing, saying, asking. We have highlighted anniversaries, fundraisers, visitors home from abroad.
Most of all though, I belive we have pushed out further the envelope of community journalism. I've not been able to find any website on this island or abroad where a small village like Kilcullen has something like the Diary. Or even bigger places.
I don't want that to sound like bragging. This is a two-way thing. There'd be no point in the Diary producing if nobody was reading. And you are.
So, from my side of the experiment, I thank you all for taking part on your side.
It has indeed done for me what I hoped, far more than I could have imagined. I hope it is doing as much for you, the readers.
The experiment isn't over. The Diary takes a fair chunk of my time to research, write, photograph and publish. But I look on it as my social life, or a major part of it.
I have a few more ideas to move forward here, as the technology allows me to try and make it an even better place for Kilcullen to be 'talking to itself'.
I'l give it my best. I hope you stick with it too.
But then, that's my job, isn't it, to keep it interesting enough for you all to come back day by day?
Maybe Kilcullen is again making waves, this time across the Internet. Small ones, sure. But waves nevertheless.
Thanks for helping me generate them, and have fun in the process. Let's make the next twelve months even better.
Brian Byrne.
