This holiday season, a friend of mine gifted me with a year-long subscription to a weblog service. If you are reading this, then you have found 1 of 2 brand new blogs that I have just started. There’s one for me, Scout, called Becoming Sage, and then there’s this one.
My intention is to have this Netkeeper blog be a running journal about what is happening with and in the WGC from my perspective. I am hoping it will serve to keep you up-to-date, so that you feel connected to the WGC year round. I anticipate using the Netkeeper blog to make announcements, share news, express opinions and expose the day-to-day foibles and frolics of the Netkeeper.
Over the past few years we have tried a couple of other options for facilitating year round communication. First it was the Forums section on the WGC website. Remember those? Probably not –most members never signed in or submitted. Then we set up a Yahoo Group that still exists. You may or may not recall receiving an invitation to join via email. Few of you responded to that and fewer still send messages to this email list. So, you might ask, why am I even bothering, knowing that only a few WGC members will bother to ever read what I write?
Actually, it’s a good question, and the best answer I have today is that it is as much for me as it is for you. Sure, I want you to read what I have to say, but it’s a running log, there are archives, you can read it once or occasionally or never. It is still there as a running account of what the WGC is up to. And we are always up to something. You might be surprised.
I also think that since I am the one doing the writing and making the effort to publish it, that it has a chance. It is my gift to the WGC for the coming year. We’ll see how well it works.
The world of weblogs is growing quickly among computer professionals, politicians, youth, artists, writers – anyone who wants to be heard. It has not caught on yet for vision quest, wilderness causes and the like. That means that we are getting off on the ground floor with the Netkeeper blog. This one little effort could be the beginning of a whole new way for us to build community. Virtually every member of the WGC has email and access to the Internet. Now the challenge is to see if we can somehow bring the sense of being out in wild places and together at our Gatherings and with people on the land and in council to this electronic means of expression.
I'm not a vision quest leader but I am very knowledgeable about the blogging world. What I've found is that an authentic voice like yours will find its audience over time. As the blogger, just do your thing. I think you'll find that this works. And it is very much about community. My guess is that you may even inspire some of your community to start their own blogs. But first it starts with you - it takes a while - but stick with it and it will work.
Posted by: Janet Tokerud | January 01, 2005 at 09:23 PM