In 2001 I started out, as one of the early business-webloggers in the Netherlands. I used the weblog 'Retail-Betaal-Gedachten' to voice my views and opinions on developments in the Dutch retail payments industry. In those early days it was a technical hassle, with Blogger being more often than not down and not having an autosave feature. Things got better afterwards, although it might of course be disputed if the Google-takeover did them really good...

Since I discovered blogs, they became my favourite tool, so I also use them to blog about Jazz and about Financial History. And I of course I should not forget to mention the payments blog, that I continued a bit more irregularly after 2005 (and that I gave the name Linkdump on Payments). In combination with my former blog: Retail-Betaal-Gedachten and the site/blog of the former branche-organisation 11a2.nl, this makes for a period of more than 10 years of blogging about payments.

I am convinced that consultants, scientists, musicians, policy makers and a whole lot of other professions can greatly benefit by setting up and maintaining weblogs on their field of expertise. It requires attention for detail, consistency over time and a lot of passion but can be a great contribution to society; given that everyone can benefit from these insights.

Some of my favorite weblogs on payments remain: the sites of Scott Loftesness (with Payment News), Dave Birch (with the Digital Money Forum), Ian Grigg (with Financial Cryptography), Aneace Haddad (Aneace's Blog) and Colin Henderson (the Bankwatch).