A recent email from the wonderful Alan Levine (a.k.a. cogdog, with his still-vibrant CogDogBlog) reminded me that once upon a time, I wrote a thing. What feels like forever-ago in 2006.
Thanks to the Wayback Machine, it can still be read. I was optimistic about online communities then. I don’t recall if term “social media” had ascended yet. It was after the first Internet bust and into the second bubble, where things were beginning to shift toward what I now recognize as full on commodification. Most of us hadn’t yet realized we, and and our digital traces, were turning into products for businesses to sell.
But I was still hopeful because of the amazing people I met. First there was the incredible Northern Voice blogging confab in Vancouver, BC. I connected to a fabulous network of folks in education who were experimenting with tech, specifically blogs. They were young, excited and our conversations about online community (me) and blogging communities (them) intersected with a glorious BANG! We floated ideas of any stripe, outrageous or not. We shared openly.
Eventually, I wrote about it.
Online community has been an important part of the Internet, mainly forming around email lists, bulletin boards and forums. In recent years, the ascendancy of blogs has introduced a new platform for communities. This article looks at some of the emerging patterns of blog based communities and raises some questions for their strategic application.
Community continues to be reshaped by not just technology, but society, climate change, positive and negative groups of people. And, in the end, it is fundamentally about connecting, not just consuming content. I try to stay positive! What about you?
This experience with the Knowledge tree was a link in me getting connected with the Flexible Learning Leaders program down under, and of course your year of being a fellow somehow filtered into me getting the opportunity in 2007.
But yes, that magic of Northern Voice, my blog remembers what I don’t, this was exhilarating– your audio is linked from the notes post I made there, to this day, this series of spontaneous events define what I was driven by in community in action (and feels lost today)
https://cogdogblog.com/2006/02/social-software-in-action-no-real-software-required/
And of course, all of this was on the road to the Agora. I so value and cherish the series of incidents by which we became colleagues and friends.