10 years ago today, the first post appeared on the Global Voices web site. Photo by Georgia Popplewell (CC BY-SA 3.0) At 10:03pm on the night of Tuesday October 26, 2004, somewhere in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Rebecca MacKinnon, CNN journalist-turned-fellow at Harvard's Berkman Centre for Internet and Society, crossed the last few t’s, dotted the final i’s, and hit the “publish” button on the back end of the WordPress blog her Berkman colleague Ethan Zuckerman had set up a few days before. And so the first Global Voices blog post was born. Like many first messages, it was hardly momentous in terms of content. It announced the agenda for a meeting Rebecca and Ethan had managed to shoehorn into the schedule of a conference taking place at Harvard Law School on December 11 of that year. The meeting, which Rebecca would describe in a second post published later that night, was called “Global Voices Online: Blogging for Independent Journalists, Concerned Citizens and Activists”, and would comprise a series of “freewheeling workshops and discussion tracks” focusing on: “…the use of weblogs and other new technologies to enhance online global dialogue and political advocacy. Participants will include international webloggers, journalists and activists with an interest in online communication techniques. A major focus of the meeting will be to develop strategies for spreading the use of online participatory media by civil society, activists, and journalists in places generally ignored by the mainstream international media.” 10 years later, here we are. Since Rebecca’s first post we’ve published over 88,000 more articles. We've become a human translation powerhouse. We've developed special sections for our freedom of expression and development work. We've won a bunch of awards. We've become interpreters, not only of languages, but of culture, politics and social dynamics, sought out and referenced by media professionals, policymakers, academics and others seeking to connect with the diverse voices and stories coming out of citizen and social media around the world. And we've held several more meetings and Summits, (with another coming up in January!). Members of the community at the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2010 in Santiago, Chile. Photo by Georgia Popplewell (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) But the achievement we're perhaps proudest of has been building and sustaining a large and vibrant volunteer community dedicated to fulfilling the Internet’s potential as a global connector. Today we kick off our 10th anniversary celebrations, building up to our official birthday on December 11, with a selection of reminiscences by some of these folks about their first encounters with Global Voices. Eddie Avila (Bolivia): “One day back in 2005, I noticed a trackback [on my blog] that informed me that this blog called Global Voices had linked to a post about Bolivian politics. Next thing I knew, an email appeared in my inbox from David Sasaki inquiring whether I would be interested in writing weekly posts about what was happening in Bolivian blogs. Naturally I felt honored, but I also felt a responsibility to properly represent my country for a global audience that seemed to generalize and reduce my country to only a few limiting characterizations.” (Read full post here) Rezwan (Bangladesh): “I was already doing small roundups about South Asia in my blog and guest-blogging in a couple of regional ones. Then in July 2005 I received a mail from Global Voices co-founder Rebecca MacKinnon: “We find that we've been linking to you quite frequently over at Global Voices and would love to know a little more about you…” She requested me to post on Global Voices. I was thrilled to write for Global Voices, and the rest is history.” (Read full post here) Portnoy (Taiwan): “I started to write blog(s) and learned that there was a brand new world out there. I accidentally found Global Voices, read some posts, and was surprised by its novelty and network. Without any hesitation, I began to translate interesting posts I read from GV. My first translation was this one, and I added my personal comment to share it with my blogging friends in Taiwan. I didn't know who might read them, but with each translation I did, I felt connected with someone on the globe…. I kept on translating posts until one day I received a message from Rebecca MacKinnon, our dearest co-founder, who read Chinese and invited me to join GV…. I am now managing several new media projects in Taiwan, trying to challenge the walking dead media world in Taiwan.” (Read full post here) Marianna Breytman (USA): “My crazy adventure with Global Voices began back in 2011 when I was looking for volunteer opportunities and came across an article about GV in The New York Times.