(This is my first piece for Wired, published 1/17)
Google engineers have created a portal to collect and disseminate whatever may be known about the fate of people in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, an attempt to create a single clearinghouse for information that is being culled by plenty of sites but remains overall a dispersed and disorganized mess.
The idea is to get the world’s media and NGOs to coalesce around what would amount to a single, authoritative Haiti victim Wiki for anything that might be known about the hundreds of thousands of people killed, wounded and left homeless by last Tuesday’s quake, which leveled major portions of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and left some 200,000 and counting dead.
The site, Google Crisis Response: Haiti Effort, is scraping other sites and soliciting information directly from the public. There is an embeddable widget and an API is in the works so that the service can go viral while remaining organized. The service can be access in English, French and Creole.
This had been a loosely organized effort by the IT community at large until Google expressed an interest in taking responsibility for it, according to MIT research scientist Chris Csikszentmihályi, who has taken it upon himself to spread the word. There are simply too many, albeit well-meaning sites trying to connect people with friends and loved ones Haiti to many any one of them effective, Csikszentmihályi says.
“In the response to the earthquake in Haiti, many organizations worked to create sites where people could find one another, or least information about their loved ones,” Csikszentmihályi, Director of the MIT Center for Future Civic Media, said in a statement. “This excellent idea has been undermined by its success: within 24 hours it became clear that there were too many places where people were putting information, and each site is a silo.”
I get asked all the time why I started, or maintained, or worked so hard on a blog. There are a million reasons, but here are just a few.
In no particular order:
1. It’s an incredible resume tool once it was built into something I was proud of.
2. No one else wanted to pay me to write, except Google’s ads.
3. I get to write all the things I wish someone else would.
4. It’s a decent source of income, that I don’t have to think about.
5. It lets me justify buying gadgets and toys “for the blog”
6. I’ve learned a ton of coding and programming because I had to fix things.
7. It helps me find other bloggers, who are interested in the same things as me.
8. It lends me credibility as someone who actually knows what they’re talking about.
9. It’s a presence, and an easy way to find me online, which matters more now than ever.
10. I’m convinced I’m a decent writer, and there’s a severe lack of that online these days.
11. I get bored easily.
12. I like having too much to do at any given time, and always having something going on.
13. I own it, and can build it without answering to anyone.
14. Not having a writing portfolio makes getting a real writing job incredibly hard.
15. I wanted a place to document all the things I learned, so I could find them again myself.
16. It’s forced me to learn (a very small amount of) design, because I want my blog to be pretty like pretty blogs.
17. It’s great writing practice.
18. Feedback is instantaneous – if I do a crappy job, I know right away.
19. It’s a faster way to get information out to more people.
20. I think blogging’s the future, and want to one day say things like “psh. I’ve been blogging since before you were born.”
21. Staying up until 4 online seems less pathetic when I’m blogging.
22. Blogging brings new people to me, and new opportunities to me, almost every day.
23. I have no marketing or business skills, and blogging’s a primer in both.
24. Most people I know personally don’t like tech nearly as much as I do, and blogging means I don’t have to just incessantly talk about it to the point where they hate me and leave me forever.
25. The only way to learn, to really learn, is to teach.
I blog because I learn something new every day, have a constant challenge in front of me, and now own something I’m incredibly proud of, and can point out to others as an example of what I can do.
For anyone who doesn’t blog, I can’t recommend it enough. You can blog about absolutely anything, and it’s the best decision you’ll ever make. It’ll open up whole new worlds for you, as it did for me.
So, I’ve discovered I’d rather write here than write my paper about campaign ads in the 1960 election, so I’ll take this chance to give you all a bit of an update on what’s up with me. There’s quite a bit, actually!
First thing: I’ve started writing for VentureBeat, a really great site for news and information about the Silicon Valley, Venture Capital, and tech worlds. Tons of interesting content, and a great site I’m stoked to be a part of! I’ll be writing there 3x/week for now, and probably more as time goes on.
Also, this is way overdue, but two new, cool related things: HackCollege and StudentBloggers. HackCollege is a phenomenal blog about not only how to do well in school, but to be awesome while you do it. I’ve been writing there for a couple of months, and though I haven’t been as regular as I wish, I’m going to get better now! StudentBloggers is a project from myself and a couple of other people – Ibrahim Husain, Kelly Sutton, and a bunch of others. We’re creating a network of blogs for and by students, and creating a much larger network of students to connect with brands and advertisers. Students, even those who rock at blogging, don’t have enough time to sell ads or market their blog like they should; we’re going to do it for them. It’s still in its infancy, but there’s some awesome stuff coming!
There’s more coming – as I graduate, and move on to what’s next (which I’m half being coy about intentionally, and half haven’t figured out 100% yet), I’ll keep you all posted! I’m super-spread out around the Web, and I’m committed to making this a better resource, not only for where to find me (MOM), but for some more important things as well. So stick around!
So I’ve been back at school for a little over two weeks now, and it’s been nuts. Lots of fun, but nuts.
A couple of cool writing-related things: My main blog, The 2.0 Life, was the Blog of The Week in Charlottesville, VA (where I go to school). There was video, and an interview – more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Which I wouldn’t think is that much fun anyway. So my standards aren’t high.
Also, I started writing a column for my school’s newspaper, the Cavalier Daily. My column is called “Technically Speaking,” and is all about how students can maximize technology in college, while minimizing costs. My first column came out today, and they’ll be bi-weekly on Thursdays throughout the school year.
My first column is called “Getting organized this semester, online, for free.” It’s exciting stuff!
That’s all for now – apparently I should be paying attention in my class that’s going on right now. I vote no, but I figure I’ll give it a try just this once.
Jeri Dansky, a really great personal organizer and writer (that’s not her in the picture above – just some excited dude), just released her monthly newsletter, all about “Organizing the Book Collection.” In it, among a lot of other great things, she quotes me!
First Organizing Quote of the Month
I take on too many responsibilities. I’m bad at saying no, and good at overwhelming myself and then not getting anything done. …
So here’s what I’ve learned: quit. Anything you possibly can, quit. We do so many things that don’t add any value to our lives or anyone else’s, and those things get in the way of that which is actually worthwhile. My favorite example is reading a book – if it’s bad, we still tend to finish it just because we’ve already invested time in it. Why not cut our losses, stop reading, and spend that time reading a better book? Being a quitter is not a bad thing – it’s a smart thing. Remove the things from your life that have no value, regardless of how much time you’ve invested, and put your time and energy into things that actually matter.
It’s cool stuff! Take a look at the whole newsletter, and Jeri’s blog – she’s good at what she does.
