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Sunday, May 25, 2003 |
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From an Interview with Jon Lebowsky, and the bold lines jumped out at me and I said to myself: "That's true. It happened to me"
Q:Over the last few months, the mainstream media seems to have finally discovered the blog movement. In particular, a lot of attention has been focused on warblogs, the name given to sites that focus primarily on political issues. Do you think that blogs would have grown in popularity so much in 2002 if not for the events of September 11 and the various crises that followed?
A: Oh, definitely. I mean, there were so many other factors - the creation of simple content management systems like Blogger and Moveable Type, for instance, and the fact that hundreds of people whose professional lives were about providing content over the web had lost their jobs, but had not lost the impulse to write and publish. So blogs would have happened regardless, but they did provide one more way for people to express their rage, frustration, pain, sadness...all those powerful emotions we associate with 9/11.
11:55:31 PM 
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Dan Gillmor's Blog of the BlogTalk event, a real "blogasm" it seems. (I say this affectionately)
2:03:22 PM
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From Small Pieces. Loosely Joined (p.49):
Consider the three places – Adbusters, NetBaby, and RageBoy’s site – on the Myrtle site that we explored. What do they really have in common? One is a political site, one is a game spot for children, and one is an idiosyncratic collection of essays by a writer with too much personality for his own good. All that holds them together is that someone at Myrtle found them interesting. For that reason alone, the three sites have been placed near one another, creating a small virtual village of sorts. On the Web, nearness is created by interest. | the Amazon link to Small Pieces
There is something here for Churches to take notice and "think upon" as a key strategy for making their Webs more like "being at Church" (in a good way). Weinberger talks about surfing a reccommended link, and finds links to other things while there. The "serendipity" happens as a sort of "guided" tour of the interests and humor of the Web author, taking him through some anti-advertising writings, an amusing game site, and RageBoy's well written rants. The variety gives a flavor of that Web author in a very unique way.
For a Church to have "voice", it seems that Weblogs naturally lead the writer to give such "tours" ; it is a sort of map of ideas and moods. It is an avenue of self-expression. Links often give a taste of a way the author feels at the moment, or to something thatthey consider important and want us to also experience it. What better example do we have of the Testimony. Weblogs, via their propensity to link, effectively communicate a variety that is at once artistic (self -expressive) and informational. It is a "shortcut to the psyche" that is often used when the writer wants to say something, but perhaps just wants to note it and give the reader a way to experience the thing that has caused an idea or a reaction to meerge in the writer, or as the "source" of a written comment or opinion. It's a new way of providing a context to a communication of some importance to the author (else they would not have bothered even to link it or comment upon it).
Churches need to be investigating NOW what can be accomplished by providing weblog services, to add to the communication mix. If the Church is interested in "connecting people", and they expend all this energy in "traditional small group development", much of which misses the mark, how is this avenue to "connecting people" getting missed?
12:08:33 PM
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What is this "Please notify so-and-so" in my Events log?
11:30:50 AM
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Looking in the Classifieds for Jobs, the Information Technology Section has gotten awfully thin these past two weeks. I found a temp agaency I had not yet heard of, and went to their Website. Many dead links on basic entry points like "Signup", which went to a GuestBook4Free.com link, which yielded a "Buy this domain" page, which means that the domain is no longer active. In other words, a dead link, and an abandoned domain name, not noticed by the Website's administrators (which probably don't exist).
To top it all off, I found a link to "Submit a resume" and spent 15 minutes filling it out, and hit "Submit Resume" at the end, and , I shoulda' known better.....it went to a dead link. I emailed them and offered my services as a Webmaster, and what'a ya think happened? Email came back, no recipient by that name. How frustrating that there are companies putting ads in the paper advertising for unemployed people to come use their services, and their Web service is basically absent; out to lunch; nobody home.
I want to find a "support group" of unemployed Developers, preferrably in Nashville, so we can meet and bitch together about the way things are, and hopefully share some networking tips to make contact with the right places. I am absolutely shocked at the lack of organized "temp developer pools" , given the decrease in available funds for Web development in many companies. Seems there would be a big demand for such. I'm sittin' here thinking I'd do web stuff for 9 or 10 dollars an hour right now.
11:18:56 AM
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