GREAT ADAPTATIONS

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The creators of Common Craft, Sachi LeFever and Lee LeFever, are brilliant at lighting up the game pieces of social technology. Using beautifully simple and short videos, they have already built an easy-access library of tutorials on aspects of online communication. Most worthy of mention is the fact that their material will work just as well for a 90-year-old as it will for anyone else. I consider them peers in the ongoing work of bridging generations.

Take a look at their video, “Blogs in Plain English.”

Yeah, I know, Lee talks a little fast. So watch it a couple of times if you need to. Let me point out, too, that as simple as these videos are, they are not oversimplified. Online communication is not really that complicated. The systems people are learning to use it can be daunting, but with a little mental elbow grease and some community support, we can all learn this stuff.

Speaking of community support, I’m going to model what online communication is good at, right now, just for you. I’d like to introduce a cloverleaf.

For good luck?
Okay, let’s back up. There’s a new term for you, most likely. A “cloverleaf” in online communication is where online and onground communities interact. To me, this is the best technology has to offer: mutual enhancement. It’s called a “cloverleaf” because, like the highway device, things move on and off the ramps and go in both directions. On a highway, a cloverleaf provides access to the community and the highway, and it is designed to do that seamlessly. In online communication, the cloverleaf occurs in many places.

The cloverleaf I am introducing is (drum roll!) the Bay Area Blog Society. TA DA!! Rev your virtual (gas free) engines!

The Bay Area Blog Society, or – you got it! – BABS, is now forming in the laptops and brains of a handful of local bloggers and blog-interested individuals. Most of us are in or near the San Francisco Bay area, but people like the LeFevers are so integral to the mission of BABS that I have invited them to be long distant BABS-es. We’ll probably have a lot of those, since it’s ridiculous to take a tool like the Internet and exclude appropriate players by virtue of their locale.

Still, part of the cloverleaf effect is that a regional association allows us to descend from our virtual crowsnests and show up in a room together. That’s a great thing. (Parties, relationships, conferences, that kind of juice.)

BABS in brief
BABS will support the development and responsible use of blogs, helping new bloggers along with local classes and e-material. Along with producing guides for people who are not yet comfortable with the Internet (and sharing ones that already exist), BABS will promote and support audio recording of useful blog material for the sight-impaired. This large demographic is pathetically under-served on the Internet. BABS will set out to solve that problem.

Read the early version of the BABS mission statement. Comments please!

See you soon,

Suzanna