Alles Normales

I reside in Russia.
I’ve been “plugged-in” to Internet since 1993 - yes, since the days prior to WWW emerging. FTP, gopher, talk, irc, USENET, mailing lists and email pretty much sum up what was available to curious mind to communicate with worldwide community.

I’ve put up few web sites (one dates back to 1996 and still is active) and none of these happen to be in Russian - I dont know why but outbound communication has been my main area of interest, I hardly have pals earned via Ru(ssian Inter)Net.

I managed to learn English on the Net. I mean, immaculate English is not among my virtues, but I’m OK with the level I mastered. Yeah, I took classes when in school and college, and I’ve been always fond of English by itself (being a musichead, I’ve been sifting tons of music (with lyrics mostly in English) through my ears and tons of LP/CD/MC covers throught my eyes), and I’ve been fond of reading Sci-Fi in English, too, but reading and communicating is two completely different things, as we Russians say. So IRC, mailing lists, USENET groups and (the main factor) email correspondence with pals worldwide taught me conversational English. Hmm, you’d better not listen to my spoken English - it’s still in embryo state, I never had a good urge to work it out.

Tech person I am not. Despite the fact I spent 8 years at one of the Russia’s first ISP’s tech support service and got a degree in Computer Science, my core responsibility was to set up software on customer’s side and (my main activity) teach our customers wonders and magic of Internet - to make them spend more and more money on Internet connectivity :).

Internet info mining has been my hobby - and small business - for ages. “Tiny business” would fit better though, ’cause it’s truly 1 person operation - never had a partner in my endevours, and scope of my small business is pretty much lowered down to person-to-person level. I’ve been always interested in how a person can make a living off Internet - or rather off such an advantage over people who still stay permanently OFFLINE as “being connected to millions people worldwide”. As mentioned above, tech person I am not, so technical aspect of Internet income was (and is) beyond my understanding - I’ve
been interested in opportunities an adventurous aspect of Information Superhighway brings to people who understand that there are still people who NEVER been to Internet or who still unable to master any online skills beyond basic email checking.

That phrase about “people who NEVER been to Internet” might sound weird to folks from US of America and EU, but us, smart guys/gals from uh…err…underdeveloped (does that sound politcorrectly enough?) countries like Russia and others, know for sure that 90% of our closest neighbours never been online.

OK…I’ve been making notes and bookmarks throughout these years and one point back in time I even decided to put up a book devoted to “opportunities an adventurous aspect of Information Superhighway brings”. Well, I even devised the book structure and started filling up chapters with draft content, but somehow the book draft didnt shape into real book. Yet I havent lost interest in the subject field - Info Mining: digging for gold in the information era. So I’m starting this blog - I believe that the more you give the more you get back, and I believe that I’ll learn a lot from blog readers’ comments, and I do hope I’ll make more friends and pals worldwide.

I also strongly believe in fact that a person hailing from a country main population of which (outside capitals) does not understand/speak English and stays OFFLINE can monetize on such an advantages of him/herself as a)good command of English b)extensive Internet experience and c)being ONLINE.

My main area of interest is “how people from non-English speaking countries manage to succeed in English language dominated Internet, how they manage to survive and prosper”.

But I’m also always interested in learning about all kinds of unusual endevours which make smart folks worldwide more prosperous then they used to be.

In a word, I’d love to hear your stories!

 

Filed under: Success stories - Offline meets Online