This is traditionally the time of year for retrospectives and making lists — both the Best of and the To do sub-variants — as well the time of year for making much-dreaded resolutions, of course. I’m not going to do any of that. The way I see it, there is a pretty good chance by this time next year I’m going to weigh more-or-less what I weigh now — fingers crossed it's not too much more.

Mostly, I think Ziggy Stardust had it right, though: I’m planning on focusing on making where I’m going ‘not boring’. After that? Well, let the proverbial chips fall where they may.

With all of that mercifully off the table for now, I’m going to use these precious column inches to talk about something completely different and about which at least some of you have been wondering.

Succinctly described it’s the one story chosen from the broad array the BluFly home office sees every day. With that selection in hand, it is then wrapped up with some TLC and then pushed out the rear door and onto our social platforms. For a short time the home office basks in the glory of having accomplished at least this much on any given day. Sadly, the afterglow quickly fades and then it all starts again for the next day.

Right off the top I want to re-iterate one of BluFly’s cornerstone principles: the selection of the SOTD is a humans-in-the-loop artefact — was, is and always will be. No AI, no near-shoring or off-shoring or other euphemism for getting somebody to do valuable work on the cheap, no crowdsourcing, no random selection or coin flips and certainly no buying a place in the rankings. Why do you care about any of this? Because making a recommendation for how you, our esteemed audience, spends a small chunk of your time is a responsibility BluFly takes very seriously.

How the selection process itself works is simple. The looped-in-humans review the dozens of stories on Today’s Shortlist and make a pick based mostly on a single, overriding criteria — it’s the one we would like to have presented to us if we were on the receiving end of the recommendation. Our interests and yours are, inextricably, one and the same thing.

Each day, there’s usually one or maybe two stories which jump out of the pile as popular favourites. Whittling it down to one rarely involves much debate. Besides, a really good story which doesn’t fit today can typically be bumped until the next day or slotted into a later date for which it might be better suited for one reason or another. We're not a hard, external-deadline-driven news organisation and don't try to be. By the daily, self-imposed deadline the SOTD is usually a unanimous, uncontentious, happy choice.

Before going any further, why only one per day you ask? Great question. It’s because another of BluFly’s cornerstone principles is the immutable value of curation. Yes, it’s an overused cliché but it’s the one word which really seems to fit, in this case. Of the torrent of aviation-related information available every day, the SOTD is the one thing it’s thought you should actually read. Nose down, arse up as a favourite teacher of mine once said.

Over the long haul, if BluFly earns the reputation of being right about the SOTD more often than it’s wrong, that’s a valuable commodity and one which, incidentally, is tricky to replicate given its ephemeral je ne sais quoi nature. As such, it has the potential to be the first of hopefully many things intended to initially attract, then retain and eventually grow BluFly’s audience.

Getting a SOTD ready for our social channels is actually more complicated than it may first sound. Making the process easier starts with ensuring the SOTD has the following elements in place — the quality of which is evaluated as part the selection process described above:

Image — It’s a fact of internet life: absent a compelling image, the most interesting story in the world is most likely dead-in-the-water and soon to sink without a trace. It’s still amazes me how much more interest there is in a bright orange aircraft than a dull grey one but anecdotally, at least, it’s a fact. Ensuring the appropriate usage rights are in place is also essential.

Summary — Of the four social platforms currently employed by BluFly, the most restrictive is Bluesky — a merciless 300 characters, all in. That said, I hope the braintrust over there does not ease up on this any time soon. Twisting Twain’s concept almost beyond recognition, I budget more time to write short, tightly worded, lucid posts instead of budgeting way less time to write long, verbose, turbid ones. Yes, value is added by taking words away.

Emojitags — These are almost impossible to miss in BluFly posts: it’s the collection of emojis found at the end of the immediately aforementioned summary. They’re the key to the future creation of Bluesky Custom Feeds 2 which have the potential to more closely reflect precisely defined areas of interest. The addition of some Emojitags are obvious (in addition to the mandatory 🛩️ of course) but quite often both utility and nance can be added by selecting a few less obvious ones and at very little cost in character count. 3

Link — Last but not least, there’s a link to more reading. This is at the core of the SOTD. The image and the summary and maybe even the collection of Emojitags are all in service of getting you to click the link and actually read about the bigger story about which our teeny-tiny posts are intended to pique your interest.

One final thing: what about hashtags, you might ask? Don't use 'em and we don't think you should either. Kind of a long story. 4

Okay, despite my previous pooh-poohing of the annual New Year traditions, I really do respect the turning of the calendar provides a milestone opportunity both the look back and look forward. Each year I really try to do a little of both in roughly equal measure.

I look back with a little dismay at how little I have accomplished in the past year despite my best intentions. But also I look back with considerable pride — a BluFly audience of over 2,000 across all platforms is one of the them, particularly since it started at effectively zero.

Candidly, it is with a little dread I look ahead to 2025 given I'm in the meaty part of my seventh decade. However, I mostly look forward with a lot of optimism as to what a shiny New Year might bring. The future, after all, is what we collectively make it. With apologies to Thoreau, this time, let's promise each other we will all go confidently in the direction of our dreams in the coming year.

Thank you, in retrospect, for your enthusiastic support over this past year. Thank you also, in anticipation, for your support over this coming year. I hope BluFly can continue to earn your attention, interest and trust each and every day. May 2025 be year of health, happiness, peace and prosperity for us all.

That’s it for this month’s column — please let me know what you think of it along with the rest of what BluFly has on offer this month. 5 Until then, thanks for reading and engaging with our posts on Bluesky, LinkedIn, Instagram and Threads. 6

Fair winds and blue skies.

Terence C. Gannon
Managing Editor

Until such time we have our Table of Contents pages up and running, we are providing the most recent posts from the feed:

Note that the embedded posts above are from the Bluesky Custom Feed 2 which is the ‘reference’ feed for BluFly. Check out said feed if you want to see what else we posted about this month.