Well, it is back to the real world after a very restful vacation. Not only did I forego blogging entirely during the break, I even went four days without any internet connectivity. That was nice, until I came back to the thousands of unread emails and blog posts!

I’ve noticed that some start off the new year with some kind of compilation of data related to number of readers or links to their blogs (like Guy Kawasaki and Ben Martin). I won’t do that because, frankly, my numbers would be embarrassing. But one thing that I do track that has always interested me is the number of downloads of the articles that I have authored that are listed on my company web site. I always put a PDF version of articles I write on my site as a resource. What is interesting is how many of things end up being downloaded, particularly since I don’t really do much to promote those articles (with the exception of usually blogging about them as they are published).

For instance, I have an article that I posted to my site very early on that is about generational diversity. It started as handouts for a training program I did on the topic. For some reason, if you google “generational diversity” this PDF comes up on the first page, so that article has now been downloaded over 14,000 times! I actually feel a little bad, because I don’t think the article is my best work (and I am currently working on a new version). In 2006, that article was downloaded 4,255 times.

Most of my articles don’t get that many hits, of course. But even my very first published article (“Going Against the Grain to Get Results”) had 125 downloads last year. Most of them are in the 150 to 300 range for the year, although my article on trust and conflict has always been a bit more popular (1,200 last year) and the article Jeff and I wrote on Strategic Capacity is on the high end as well (471). You can see all my articles here. Total downloads this year: 8,490, compared to 6,317 last year (and only 931 in 2003!).