Quaker Gatherings covered by blogs
Just the quickest of posts to announce that Quaker Gatherings are now being covered on QuakerQuaker. Each event page tries to list all blog posts that refer to the event in question.
Past events covered: February's Young Adult Friends Gathering in New Jersey and FUM Board Meeting in Kenya, and the Quaker Heritage Day in Berkeley California last week. Upcoming events are FWCC Americas Meeting in Rhode Island (it includes a panel on Convergent Friends featuring Robin M and C Wess Daniels, May's Britain Yearly Meeting Sessions that will feature an official blog, and this summer's FGC Gathering whose damnably attractive advance program went up today.
I'm pretty excited by this development, which is really just a reflection of the growth of Quaker blogging. Too much of the public news from Quaker events has been barely-conceal boosterism, a publicity fluff piece for the sponsoring organization. In other words: dull and trite. The growing Quaker blog culture is very different from that of mainline Quaker institutions. There's a much greater transparency and openness and less of a sense that we have to identify and defend a particular Quaker tradition. We're much more willing to tell stories and wrestle with controversies.
Quaker events (at least in networked North America) are now being covered online in real time with more depth and opinion that we've previously seen. I think this is a good kick-in-the-pants for the bureaucratic dinosaurs of institutional Quakerism and an exciting opportunity for getting new voices and opinions heard.
As I see events unfolding in the Quakerosphere, I'll add more pages. They won't be limited to U.S. and British events except that we seem to be dominating this realm still. If too many events start being covered (which is only a matter of time) I'll have to figure out some way of breaking them down more.
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About Martin
I’m a Quaker from
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Can you link to Kenyan friends? Kaimosi connection, for example?
http://kaimosicnxn.blogspot.com
Hey, Martin! I had been wondering when we might see from you a new addition in the Quakersphere's infrastructure. Now you've answered my private question. smile
Blessings,
Liz Opp, The Good Raised Up
Hi Liz: yes, well with the "Quakosphere" growing I need to be thinking a few developments ahead. Reportage from events was going to overwhelm QuakerQuaker this year--all the good posts following last month's YAF conference were a sign of things to come.
If anyone is interested in helping the infrastructure, please do consider a "generous donation":https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=nvweb%40nonviolence.org&item_name=QuakerRanter.Org%2BDonation&no_note=1¤cy_code=USD&image_url=https://secure.serve.com/nvweb/graphics/paypallogo.gif. I'm still jobless and I really can't afford to do much with QuakerQuaker. The only reason I can justify this latest development is because it's built on "Yahoo Pipes":http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/, a cutting edge development tool that I can now add to my resume (I'll be writing something about it on my "tech blog":www.martinkelley.com/blog/ soon).
I know the next couple of steps in QQ's development but frankly they're equivalent to $500 to $1000 work. Putting my amateur historian's hat on, I really think this blogging subculture is one of the key ingredients in any sort of Quaker revival that might be brewing...
*Hi Kniterati*: I've been following Kaimosi Connection informally but I'll add it to my "Quaker Blog directory":http://www.quakerquaker.org/quaker_blogs/. Do let me know about other East African blogs I've overlooked.
I am glad you posted on this, and I agree with you about how this growing blog culture is going to challenge the old institutions we have in our Quaker tradition (we saw some of that this weekend).
Thanks for posting this, I appreciate all the links so I can keep up with what is going on in the wider Quaker world!