Blog Together

Feb 11, 2005

In a few minutes, I’ll be heading to the airport to pick up my friend and mentor John Ettorre. Later in the day, we’ll loop back to the airport to pick up Dan Gillmor. Both John and Dan – and 150 others – will be joining me tomorrow for the Triangle Bloggers Conference, which the Durham Herald-Sun previews in an article today.

The last seven weeks have been exhilarating, and just the process of organizing a conference using online tools – email, blogs, wiki – has been worth the whimsical idea I had just before Christmas. And I’m sure that tomorrow’s dialogue about how to use blogs as a tool of community building will be doubly rewarding, what with the amazing collection of bloggers, journalists, community organizers, educators and business people that will gather in Murphey Hall 116 around 8:30 a.m.

Erin and I talked last night about church communities, an ongoing conversation in which we’ve been searching for ways to become part of a community, teach our children to be ethical and moral and kind and gracious, explore spirituality and belief, and remain open and liberal-minded (as opposed to dogmatic and literal-minded). No answers yet, but talking about our need to be part of a whole and our desire to participate with others in life and civics and science and journalism is exciting.

I’ll be meeting many new individuals tomorrow. I’m excited to find the threads that connect us, and to learn from them about building community.

Anton Zuiker ☄