I know this site isn’t designed for that sort of thing, but I figure there are a lot of people here who are reasonably well connected and maybe this is a good place to ask.
I was looking for a place to discuss doing things that help influence the world for the better that’s focused on good science, methodologies, and results and is entrenched the world of the practical.
I’ve found a few places that seemed like they might have been close, but so far I’ve ended up pretty disappointed.
When it comes to basic design I thought Heiroglyph (co-created by Neal Stephenson) would be perfect, and it does have some good people there but the forum itself is pretty much dead and I’m looking for somewhere where we can have conversations. Urgent Evoke is perhaps even more appropriate and clever in design but it’s even more dead to make up for it.
I thought perhaps TED might be a good place to go but the forum structure there is pretty horrible
Then there are sites like The Venus Project but the community structure is only slightly better than TEDs and the comments are pretty heavy on the woo and it doesn’t seem like ther’s much focus on actually getting things done.
So I’m wondering if anybody here knows of anywhere better? I’m going to be hitting such things pretty aggressively again soon and I’d rather focus on one or two places so I can develop a good reputation rather than flying by a bunch of them and ending up mentally exhausted with nothing to show for it.
You could always set up your own thing? Maybe if you build it and get links in the right places, they will come? You could always also set up an account on something high traffic (tumblr?) and set up a twitter to “advertise” your message board/blog/whatever.
Then again, there is so much noise online in general, it’s often hard to get heard.
I’ve actually thought about that, but it’d be quite a ways out of my comfort level and like you said there’s a lot of noise out there. I’m good at plenty of things but I’m pretty sure that’s something I’m pretty unsuited for solo. I’m not an internet community person really.
I figure there’d have to be somebody somewhere who’s taken a decent stab at it and has a well moderated and designed forum that I just haven’t found because it’s buried under all the others (or is hiding!) . . . and I’d rather join forces than drift off on my own, y’know?
Part of it is so that I can hand off some things I’ve put together to others who are better able to implement them (I have a lot of things that I’ve just got sitting gathering dust). I’m not a credit or ownership person and would perfectly happy to see someone else run with them.
The rest is because I have something big I’m working on (the whole ‘networked collection of small asshat-fee civilizations inside the hollowed out shell of a multinational corporation’ bit) and while I’m leaning towards eventually just giving up and starting one myself (and not telling anyone what the nonevil master plan is. . . saves a lot of explaining), but I feel like it’s better if that particular idea is more of a collective/crowdsourced one rather than something that would invariably be about me.
Elon Musk I’m not. I kind of would rather hide in the background and be one of many rather than particularly important, so a part of me is desperately fighting against being the center of attention.
