Kottu.org turns 15 today

Long forgotten Sri Lankan blog aggregator kottu.org went live 15 years ago (details at the end of this post). For most of the handful of people who are reading this, the previous sentence will read as an irrelevance. kottu.org is an artefact of Sri Lanka’s early 21st century “Digital Culture”. I had the privilege of encountering it at the height of its significance (2007 – 2009). 13 years on, I realise its influence on me is profound. Hence this “tribute”.

kottu.org kept me blogging. It got me into the habit of typing out thoughts in my head into structured groups of sentences that led to somewhere specific. At a plodding pace, my coherence increased with practice. I discovered other bloggers whose writing was inspiring. The cycle of reading, writing and feedback led me to two slow realisations:

• some of the stuff I typed was something that other humans enjoyed reading
• I could grow to enjoy reading what I typed to the extent I might one day dare to call it “writing”

Those realisations got me focusing on the what and the how of saying things through writing. The practice extended into the non blogging areas of my life. The result made me an effective communicator. Its positive consequences continue to ripple through my life – beyond just work.

That is the gift kottu.org has left me with. Thank you Indi and Mahangu.

Historical context

Others have written posts covering the historical context of kottu.org

• Yudhanjaya Wijeratne’s post covers the big picture
• Marisa Wikramanayake has a personal account that’s worth reading
• If you want a formal analysis and have access to the “Communalism and Globalization in South Asia and its Diaspora” journal, you can dig in to Pradeep Jeganathan’s “Kottu.org: Community after communalism” (there’s a longish abstract)
• List of my past posts of Kottu.org
• Post on how I figured out kottu.org’s age