My first reac­tion was “huh?” I war­i­ly respond­ed: “you do know about FGC’s Quak​erfind​er​.org and FWC­C’s Meet­ing Map, right?” I had helped to build both sites and attest­ed to the amount of work they rep­re­sent. I was think­ing of a kind way of dis­cour­ag­ing Mic­ah from this her­culean task when he told me he and Jon were half done. He sent me the link: a beau­ti­ful web­site, full of cool maps, which they’ve now pub­licly announced at Quak​ermaps​.com. I tried to find more prob­lems but he kept answer­ing them: “well, you need to have each meet­ing have it’s own page,” “it does,” “well but to be real­ly cool you’d have to let meet­ings update infor­ma­tion direct­ly” (an idea I sug­gest­ed to FGC last month), “they will.” There’s still a lot of inputting to be done, but it’s already fabulous.

Two peo­ple work­ing a series of long days inputting infor­ma­tion and embed­ding it on Word­Press have cre­at­ed the coolest Meet­ing direc­to­ry going. There’s no six-figure grants from Quak­er foun­da­tions, no cer­ti­fied pro­gram­mers, no series of orga­niz­ing con­sul­ta­tions. No Sales­force account, Dru­pal instal­la­tions, Ver­ti­cal Response signups. No high paid con­sul­tants yakking in what­ev­er consultant-speak is trendy this year.

Just two guys using open source and free, with the cost being time spent togeth­er shar­ing this project – time well spent build­ing their friend­ship, I suspect.

I hope every­one’s notic­ing just how cool this is – and not just the maps, but the way it’s come togeth­er. Mic­ah and Jon grew up in two dif­fer­ent branch­es of Friends. As I under­stand they got to know each oth­er larg­er­ly through Jon’s now-famous and much-debated video Dance Par­ty Erupts dur­ing Quak­er Meet­ing for Wor­ship. They built a friend­ship (which you can hear in Mic­ah’s recent inter­view of Jon) and then start­ed a cool project to share with the world.

Con­ver­gent Friends isn’t a the­ol­o­gy or a spe­cif­ic group of peo­ple, but a dif­fer­ent way of relat­ing and work­ing togeth­er. The way I see it, Quak​ermaps​.com proves that Quak​erQuak​er​.org is not a fluke. The inter­net expos­es us to peo­ple out­side our nat­ur­al com­fort zones and pro­vides us ways to meet, work togeth­er and pub­lish col­lab­o­ra­tions with min­i­mal invest­ment. The quick response, flex­i­bil­i­ty and off-the-clock ethos can come up with tru­ly inno­vat­ed work. I think the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends is enter­ing a new era of DIY orga­niz­ing and I’m very excit­ed. Mic­ah and Jon FTW!