If you're interested in this process, building a community and the like, here are two things I read today that were helpful.
First is Looking for a reason to hide by Seth Godin. It's easy to fall into that trap of doing nothing, of adopting the 'wait and see' because it's almost always safer than taking a risk. I'm super susceptible to this, especially right now when capital markets are crashing, there's a presidential election, I never built a community like this, zomg aliens! It's probably not Seth's best post evar, but it helped to read it first thing this morning and realize "hey, if Godin thinks it's a good idea ... fuck it, let's make some moves, people." If you look at all the reasons I've listed, almost none of them have an actual bearing on what I'm doing, but that's the thing about indecisiveness, it'll grab any reason to keep you rooted in place.
Second is The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric Steven Raymond. I can't believe this is the first time I've read this, especially considering how involved I was with IT but it is. It's awesome and just between you and me, I consider it a pretty good blueprint on how to move forward with this whole project.
And as an aside -- How many people watched the presidential debates tonight? I don't want this to turn at all political, just mention, casually in the comments, if you watched the debates. A yes or no will do. I'll edit any responses that go much beyond that.
Posted by Ben Corman at 7:47 PM