This new weekly column, where political bloggers explain what they do with the important parts of life, kicks off with an interview with Mike Rouse, who writes at mikerouse.net, and occasionally here at The Wardman Wire.

Mike Rouse used to be the IT Department of 18 Doughty Street, and was responsible for keeping the technology running among the chaos (inevitably) caused by so many “creatives”. He now runs Messagespace Creative, and looks after a number of political websites, including John Redwood’s blog and the Web Commons site.

Who are you?

Mike Rouse, Managing Director of MessageSpace Creative Limited, a website design and creative firm with a specialism in politics. I set the firm up under another name in June 2006, put it on hold for a while as I became part of 18 Doughty Street, but have since refocused my energies into the firm. I’m 24 and originally come from the great city of Coventry - home to the mighty Sky Blue army and Lady Godiva. I’m the difficult middle child of three from working class roots.

My father was a Pickfords removal man for many years until his death in 2004 from lung cancer and my mum was a Socialist Labour activist, but 3 children and 4 strokes means she now enjoys a much quieter pace of life.

In her day she was quite notorious - so much that a young Labour PPC called Geoffrey Robinson was too frightened to meet her.

What is your day to day life like?

At the moment, there is no routine. The firm is in its early stages again and that can mean it’s either an early start to meet potential clients and partners or working through the night to complete a project.

I try to take some time out during the day to watch Scrubs, but usually end up updating my own blog during that time as I’ve seen most of the episodes a million times before.

Why do you write a blog? What is it for?

Originally I set up a blog to treat it as a sandbox for my ongoing experiments with the various blogging platforms. But then, as life went on and I ended up in London, I found it quite useful to keep the folk back at home up-to-date and a useful place to sound off about things.

Nowadays I use it to communicate with activists and other bloggers about various ideas and developments. It can vary between being political and technical, but certainly has a recent focus on IPTV and internet-based video delivery.

Which blogs do you write (or contribute to)?

Through the firm I am involved with a number of blogs, but not in an editorial sense. I would love to write for more blogs, but it’s always an issue to find the time.

How do you fit blogging in?

I do find it relaxing to blog as soon as I wake up and before I’ve done anything. It seems to mentally set me up for the day.

What are your inspirations?

In terms of blogging I admire Dizzy and am a big fan of Iain Dale’s Diary, not least because I worked with Iain at Doughty Street so I know what he’s like. He’s genuinely one of the good guys and if I were ever to start taking my blog seriously and wanted to build an audience, particularly in politics I would look to Iain for how to do it.

What sort of blogs do you like reading?

As with my musical and film tastes, my Google Reader is filled with an eclectic mix from the Freakonomics blog, via the IE Blog (so I can see what doom they have in store for me next), to the intellectual musings of John Redwood.

Do you think blogs are important - why and how?

They can be over-hyped in some ways. In the political blogosphere there are the big blogs, and whilst it is possible to get up there with hard work, time and perseverance there are a lot of blogs out there with very small readerships. That said, it’s not the quantity that matters.

If a post on a blog makes a difference to a local area - say on a planning or transport issue then it has been really important to those local people.

Do you have any good stories?

Well, there was the time that I went out with a number of bloggers and ended up in, shall we say, a rather awkward situation involving a misinterpreted sign above an establishment in a rather dodgy part of London. I couldn’t possibly divulge any more than that!

Tags: mike rouse, the day job, mesagespace creative[tags]mike rouse, the day job, mesagespace creative[/tags]