I’m pretty low down on the geek ladder, but I’m pretty far up on the blogging one. Reading this made me flash back to all my early Tripod Volunteer Management days. Ah, the excitement and promise of community building. That intersection of virtual and real world. Well then it was a little more about the community inside the virtual world. I found some of the same sense in the early Blogger days. Finding the same aura around the NaNoWriMo world too.
My own experience of virtual meets IRL worlds extends even longer than my blogging experience, going back to my time with online quilt groups. When the quilt world met the virtual world there was all kinds of unexpected unknown and as-yet-unrealized geekiness unleashed on the world. It was pretty heady stuff.
Some folks I know now, I met in the early ICQ days when we’d have rolling-time-zone pajama parties sharing recipes for favorite snack foods and patterns and fun as the night moved from one time zone to the next. How fun was that? A lot of fun. And amazing to think that you were chatting with people from around the world, who shared your interests and in many ways all the life things that young women share.
From that came many quilt web sites and email lists. I belonged to a few then and I belong to a few now. My interest comes and goes for the bigger ones like QuiltArt and others. The big ones are generally not as much fun or as sharing as they used to be. I don’t spend time wondering why and won’t waste yours. I still read and watch the evolution with interest.
But I’m still in touch with a small group of folks I met in those early days, from across the world. We actually met once in California, and some met more times than that. We’re the old friends who can pick up where ever we last left the conversation – we’ve got the background and can fill in the blanks quickly.
So carry on, WordPress folks. You’ve done much to promote the idea of sharing and open source development for years and I salute you for it. Building virtual community and melding it with real life is never ever a bad thing.
