Meryl's Notes Blog

Webreference could not have picked a better time to review of Derek Powazek’s new book, Design for Community: The Art of Connecting Real People in Virtual Places. Digital-Web has an interview with Powazek in its current issue. After last week’s horrors, the Web community has truly come together like never before. Rather than relying on one-way journalism, we get the benefit of two-way communication through online communities via bulletin boards, postings, mailing lists and much more. Powazek’s { fray } is the ultimate example of a community Web site. Anyone can submit an article and anyone can reply to the articles posted. People have shared their personal true stories about life in general. The success of { fray } has led to fray day 5 around the US, a global storytelling event artfest and storytelling open mic. I heard the one in Austin during SXSW was crowded and a big success.

After I read as much news reports as I could, I went to blogs and group sites to read what others were feeling. Some of these resources were better than the professional resources. Wired covered this today after I had already written my entry. I loved the paragraph about the Muslim man and the Jewish Hasidic man. That’s how I wish we would treat one another today. Just treating each other like humans and respecting our differences. I wrote about learning of the crashes and what I was thinking in { fray }. My story is not unique at all, but it was an opportunity to write down what I experienced living in Texas. Though I didn’t like The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Its closing describes last week… “The horror. The horror.”