It was a tough year, that needs no emphasizing, except to say we extend our heartfelt sympathies to anyone who lost a loved one from COVID-19 this year, or from any number of other dangers that tangled up to make 2020 one of the most challenging years on record. At Cronicle Press Tech News, we were just kicking off our first full year of reporting on tech and startup news from Michigan and Midwest tech industries, and the uncertainty for us as a fledgling blog and for the companies we were reporting on was unprecedented.
The news cycle seemed to hold its breath for a moment in the spring, as many people weren’t prepared to go on record with plans until events worked themselves out and a road forward became apparent. We increased our business coverage to help startup founders and tech talent in particular secure funding or jobs through the pandemic, and saw our traffic increase 50% over that period. We’re grateful that the news coverage of business resources and positive posts about urgent calls for support of manufacturing PPE and collaborations reached so many people when we’re a relatively new publication.
More than ever, we are also grateful to be in a position to hear the inspiring stories of people working to create new technology that supports medicine, biotech, software, security, remote learning software and summer camps, library research access and new ways to search rapidly emerging COVID-19 research, and fully end-to-end encrypted conferencing technologies, connected mobility, and so much more. How inspiring are all of you, with your rapid development of COVID-19 tests, inflammation treatment technologies, and even inventing new forms of PPE to get us all through 2020? Not to mention the remote learning technology, the generosity among the community, and hearing from founders who were starting new companies that pivoted on a dime to help others even while the owners themselves were just recovering from COVID-19.
We are very lucky to be safe and healthy after a year that challenged us in many ways as well, and we hope that you had the best year possible under these circumstances. If you have the energy left on this last day of the year (or any time in the coming weeks), we would love it if you would drop us a line to tell us your story of this year, whether you would like to simply share a personal anecdote of the changing tech community or have news for an interview. We’re taking a few days off here as we have done the most predictable 2020 thing of all in addition to buying high-end liquor and failing a loaf of sourdough while eating Oreos: we adopted a new puppy.
Happy New Year from Cronicle Press, and thank you so much to everyone who has made it possible for us to continue to grow this year, offer content marketing to tech startups, and for the generous support of our sponsors, from DevOps Days Detroit to Ann Arbor SPARK. We love what you do and will keep sharing your inspiring stories, whatever 2021 brings.
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