[LM_NET] Sept 2, 2005: International Blogging for Disaster Relief Day

[Andy Carvin <acarvin@EDC.ORG>]

Late last night, tossing and turning in bed, images of Hurricane Katrina 
coverage echoed in my mind. I started thinking about how the online 
community has responded to the hurricane. Many people are truly doing 
yeoman's work, working around the clock to help cover the hurricane and 
disseminate resources. The coverage on Wikipedia has been extraordinary, 
as has been the case on Nola.com. Craigslist and NowPublic have 
certainly stepped up to the plate; even the amazing team from the 
TsunamiHelp blog, halfway around the world, have done their part by 
creating a KatrinaHelp wiki. Their generosity humbles me.

And yet as I think about all the work that's been done, I'm somewhat 
surprised that we haven't seen the Katrina equivalent of TsunamiHelp 
rise to the top. For those of you who may not remember, bloggers from 
around the world formed an alliance to publish an international blog and 
clearinghouse of tsunami-related information. Far and away, it was the 
best resource out there as the horror of the tsunami unfolded. (Full 
disclosure - I was a contributing blogger on the site, but I joined 
rather late. All the credit goes to them.)

Why haven't we see a Katrina-related blog of TsunamiHelp-like 
proportions? You would think that the US, the birthplace of blogging, 
would have been able to catalyze a who's who of bloggers to coordinate 
information sharing, just as TsunamiHelp did. Instead, we've seen a 
scattering of blogs pop up here and there, doing their best to share 
information. But it's distributed and dispersed, with no coordination 
between them.

Meanwhile, I've also noticed that many blogs have gone on with their 
daily lives as if Katrina never happened. Sure, they may have mentioned 
it once or twice, but have they posted any Katrina resources? Have they 
linked to the Red Cross? Have they encouraged people to donate blood? 
Some, yes. Most, no. Anti-Bush blogs continue to bash Bush, while 
pro-Bush blogs continue to praise him. Travel blogs continue to talk 
about travel. Tech blogs talk tech, pet blogs talk pets. Can't we all 
just take a break and focus on helping disaster victims for just a moment?

We now live in an age of tagging, RSS and distributed computing. Perhaps 
we don't need to have all of these great bloggers posting to one site, 
or have bloggers focused full-time on the disaster. All we really need 
is to get as many people as possible using the blogging tools available 
of them, posting whatever Katrina-related information they're 
comfortable with, then use tags and RSS feeds to bring it all together.

Therefore, I'd like to unilaterally declare tomorrow, Friday September 
2, as International Blogging for Disaster Relief Day.

If you have a blog, here's what you can do. Sometime tomorrow, take a 
break from whatever it is you usually blog about, and post something 
constructive related to disaster relief. You can keep it topical to your 
blog: for example, if you usually blog about pets, blog about Noah's 
Wish or another entity working to rescue and reunite hurricane-affected 
pets with their families. Or, you can just dedicate blog space to 
listing websites where people can donate money (maybe even challenge 
people to match your donation), or share a story of a hurricane 
survivor. This goes for photo bloggers, podcasters and video bloggers as 
well - there's no reason why this should be text-only.

For those of you outside of the US, you could post about a disaster 
relevant to your community. Post lists of supplies needed for victims of 
yesterday's stampede in Baghdad. Post an update on how your family is 
recovering from the tsunami. Post multi-lingual resources for African 
families in Paris displaced by the recent apartment fires. Blog about 
whatever you choose, as long as it supports some kind of disaster 
assistance in a constructive way.

One thing I'd discourage you from doing, though, is making this 
political. There will be plenty of time for recriminations about who's 
to blame, if anyone, for Katrina, and the political ramifications. No 
doubt this will be a major topic of conversation in the blogosphere, but 
it can wait. People need help now.

When you've posted to your blog, be sure to include a link to this 
Technorati tag:

http://technorati.com/tag/International%20Blogging%20for%20Disaster%20Relief%20Day

That way, when people follow that link, they'll be able to find a 
collection of all relevant postings published throughout the 
blogosphere. There will also be an RSS feed on that page, which can be 
used to aggregate all of the postings and display them on a single 
webpage. I plan to aggregate them on my Katrina Aftermath blog 
(http://katrina05.blogspot.com). You can do the same. (Later, I'll post 
a javascript to make it easy for anyone to do this - more soon.) One 
collection of disaster relief resources, countless bloggers. That's the 
power of the blogosphere.

So please join me tomorrow and participate in International Blogging for 
Disaster Relief Day. Take a break from whatever it is you normally blog 
about - even if it's just for one post - and give back to the Net. -andy

-- 
-----------------------------------
Andy Carvin
Program Director
EDC Center for Media & Community
acarvin @ edc . org
http://www.digitaldivide.net
http://www.tsunami-info.org
Blog: http://www.andycarvin.com
-----------------------------------

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