It was Thursday evening, February 15.  The place was Conner Prairie and the event was the City of Service awards, a night to recognize volunteers throughout the Fishers community.  I was the master of ceremonies, placed at a table with Mayor Scott Fadness and some of his city staff.

Even though it was my second year of emceeing this special celebration, I was still nervous.  I once had a speech professor in college tell the class that if you are not nervous before giving an important speech, there is something wrong with you.  The key is channeling that nervous energy into preparing the presentation.

And I did lots of preparation.  It helped that the mayor was in a talkative mood that night.  He described how his car died on him in the middle of a turn lane in Fishers, and how glad he was that it didn’t cause an accident.  He was also glad no one can accuse him of driving around in a high-priced fancy city vehicle.

Then the mayor turned to me and asked me what the biggest story has been since I started covering news here in Fishers?  I didn’t need to think long about that one.  It was the 2012 referendum when Fishers voters decided we should be a second class city with a strong mayor’s office.

Mayor Fadness responded the the most important issue he has seen in his time with Fishers was the Geist annexation.  I followed that story as a citizen but it predates LarryInFishers.com.

I had already made some opening remarks before dinner about volunteerism, but it was time for me to introduce the mayor.  That’s always a tough thing to do, so I tried to make light of the areas where the mayor and I are not alike (for example, he’s tall, I’m short) and kidded about our mutual love for drinking Diet Coke.

But I did want to emphasize that, leaving any policy differences aside, the mayor and I have one very important thing in common – we both love this community and the people in this community.  That’s why I’m a volunteer blogger and that’s why Scott Fadness ran for mayor.

When the mayor took to the podium,  he did something I did not expect.  He talked about how my work is in the spirit of volunteerism and how I had tried to fill the reporting gap about public policy issues in Fishers, and I received a round of applause from the crowd.

The mayor was very kind to extend that sort of praise to me.  He hasn’t liked every story I have written, but he respects they way I go about this blog, striving to be fair but occasionally calling it as I see it.

When I was approached about being the emcee for the first volunteer recognition banquet, I didn’t hesitate to say yes.  But I was nervous then, just like I was this year.  Thankfully, I got through the event without falling on my face.

Congratulations to all the volunteers honored at this year’s banquet.  Every volunteer is important and the City of Service Awards is a very special way for all of us to honor volunteers.

Special recognition is in order for Tony Elliot and Dan Domsic from the Parks and Recreation Department.  They put together a very special City of Service event.

Since this blog is a volunteer effort for me, I had some soul searching to do a few months ago.  My wife Jane was prepared to retire and I was looking at everything I do, which includes volunteer activities beyond this news blog.

Should I continue writing this blog?  Should I continue attending all these local meetings, most not covered by any other reporter?

I was leaning toward ending this blog.  I have been doing this for six years, hoping someone or some entity might start a commercial operation to provide news to local residents in a timely manner.  But six years came and went and nothing of the sort has surfaced.  It’s a symptom of how tough it is to  make money in news these days.  The public is more interested in consuming news products than ever, but technology has made it harder to find a money-making model that makes sense to deliver news, particularly on the local level.

After floating that idea of ending the blog, I couldn’t believe the messages I received in just a few hours after that post.  People I know, many I have never met, pleaded with me to continue.  I must be honest, I never expected the flood of comments that came in asking me to keep going.

So, here I am.  Just a word of warning….I am not getting any younger so I cannot do this forever, but I have made a promise to myself I will at least continue this blog through the municipal elections of 2019.  I’m not saying I’ll close shop then, I just want to keep going at least that long.

I’ve never shared the data I am about to give you publicly, but I will because it is amazing to me.  When I started this blog in January of 2012 I thought a few government policy nerds like myself would care to read this little blog.  I never expected to see the numbers I am about to show you now.

According to my Google Analytics data, just under 30,000 individual people have accessed LarryInFishers.com on at least one occasion dduring the past year.  During that same time period, there have been over 156,000 page views, meaning there have been more than 156,000 times a person has accessed one part of my news blog.  These are numbers I could never imagine in 2012 for a locally-focused news blog.

Then there is my podcast series which began in February, 2016.  In the past year, there have been just under 13,000 occasions where someone has taken the time to listen to most or all of a podcast I have produced.  Over the past two years, I have produced more than 200 individual podcasts and over 20,000 times someone has listened to one of those podcasts.

I cannot believe these numbers.  The podcasts were originally designed to give people doing important work locally to sit down and talk at length about their work.  That continues to be a focus of my podcast series that has expanded.

I still do the Arts&Fishers podcasts, which features reviews of films, television programs and local arts events. I tried a daily series on taxes, but that died for lack of interest.

Then I met Adam Aasen at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast event and he had listened to some of my film reviews, and it turns out we are both movie buffs.  One thing led to another, and we now are on our 9th month of producing a weekly podcast about film, Hamilton County Goes To The Movies.

This news blog has also led to some other writing opportunities for me.  There have been periods of time the editor of Current in Fishers has asked me to write commentaries and I have done that (although keeping them at 320 words or less has been a challenge).

I have had some wonderful opportunities to write for the Indianapolis Business Journal, including an Op-Ed piece during our first mayoral election in Fishers, and writing commentaries for their Indiana Forefront opinion blog (since discontinued).

I also appreciate my relationship with Jeff Jellison and his Hamilton County Reporter newspaper.  We have a news-gathering partnership that has been working well for both of us.  Our partnership means I will post stories from The Reporter and he is free to publish my blog material in his publication.

This has been quite a ride and the mayor is right to say I have a nerdish interest in local public policy that motivates me to continue writing this blog.  But the most important reason I continue is because of you, those of you taking the time to read my blog posts.  Thank you for reading.  And please keep reading and listening to my podcasts.

In the meantime, I will continue to reflect daily on what its like to live in Fishers.  It is a much different place compared to when I moved here in 1991.  And change is inevitable.  At least for now, I plan to be here and cover it.