Anyway. Starting soon (when? ahhh, when there's time!), we'll share other Portland parents' opinions and perspectives - and even a picture of themselves, their kids, their shoe, whatever (as long as it's not raunchy), if they want. What, exactly, is in this for you??? The opportunity to 'meet' other Activistas, to hear their take on things (six questions, actually), and, of course, get a break from me (even I need one once in awhile)! For obvious reasons, we're calling this the Guestivista series.
And while, yes, the first guest will be my invite - hard, so hard, to let go! - after that this first facinating Guestivista will choose another, and another, and so one. You get the picture. The possibilities are endless - how I love that! Will we know who's next? As my Dad would say, 'does a cat have a tail?' Yes, I'm not one to release total control. But, the idea of this way of identifying the next Guestivista is to broaden the lens - and community - beyond our own. Of course, this being the small, small town that it is, you may well know all of these people already! But now you'll know them better.
So, check back and see whom you might meet. A hint about the very first Guestivista: she's got red hair and she's from (hold on to your hat!) Delaware. Intriguing, huh? And whom she'll invite? Nobody knows - probably not even her yet! And, for the record, this is no mama-only schtick. Papas can be blog-worthy, too, right?
In case I wasn't entirely clear here: these fascinating Guestivistas won't be writing regular posts, they'll be answering a bunch of questions that we'll then post with an intro. As I said, I'm not one to let go of control easily!
Posted by: Lisa | January 30, 2008 at 05:35 PM
another invite only club? Hmmmmm.
Posted by: ProtestMama | January 30, 2008 at 07:04 PM
Protest Mama - hello! Thanks, as always, for your comments. Comments, as you know, are an open forum with no invitation required, which is great, because it allows anyone to post their views, so long as the main guidelines are followed. Despite your suggestion that this is some sort of club (I'm 38, a little old for clubs!), Guestivistas was intended to bring more voices to the mix. "Invite only" by necessity - most blogs function that way (in my limited experience), with submittals welcome but an approval required by the moderators/editors. Since this is an all volunteer effort by working mamas, we do the best we can given our time and worldview (we all have one, right?). It might be that what we can do is not always the best thing for everyone, but being all things to all people is asking a lot! That said, if you are interested in answering the Q's in a constructive way, let me know; I'd be happy to have you "on" as a Guestivista at some point. Again, thanks for taking the time to comment.
Posted by: Lisa | January 30, 2008 at 07:46 PM
A neat idea that you've come up w/ in a short time. Nicely done.
Posted by: anon.2 | January 30, 2008 at 08:55 PM
very cool idea, i'm just a bit confused (concerned?) at how it works.
it appears the guest "columns" are invite only, in a guest columnist A picks guest columnist B fashion, but we're *also* invited to write in and say "hey, I'd love to answer the questions and be a Guestivista"? i'm not clear how it works both ways.
and yep, you're right in that most blogs are moderated -- and i think it's totally reasonable for folks to submit their pieces for a read-through and consideration. but i also think that moderation is different than what you're describing.
i don't mean to nitpick -- seriously, i think it's a cool column idea! i guess my only concern is similar to ProtestMama's in that all the "voices" might wind up being folks who know each other/are *already* socially connected. i'd love to share thoughts, but i don't really "know" anybody on this forum in the traditional "oh yes, let me pick her for the next round" sense. i'd hate to think that people's voices might not get heard just because they don't have friends or a "social" presence on the site.
Posted by: jenn | January 31, 2008 at 10:07 AM
Since I'm winging this, I may well not have been 100% clear on how it works: I asked someone whom I believe will offer an interesting and yes different - simply because she's not me - perspective. Essentially we'll ask some questions, Guestivistas will answer, and I'll post it with a quick intro to the person. A perfect way to incorporate every voice and angle and person? Of course not. Is that possible? I don't think so. Is it my goal? I'm not sure it needs to be. New, interesting, different voices? Bring it on!
If the expectation is for this post series to be a perfect mirror of society at large, we will almost certainly fail. Will the voices know the person before and after them? Yes. But beyond that, unlikely. I imagine they'll be creative in their selctions, adding the voices THEY think will be interesting to readers. Perhaps they will stumble across someone that'll be great, but would never have volunteered themselves for the job? While it starts here, where it ends up is hopefully with someone I've never met but am really glad to know about, someone outside my social circles (in most cases, the people in my social circles have other social circles that don't include me, so they can tap into those - or maybe someone will ask someone they just met!
If this system that I cooked up doesn't work out that way, it can easily be tweaked. Most things do get tweaked here and there to be the best they can be.
I have found all the recent diversity discussion (on the main uM) to be quite enlightening, broadening, fascinating, in fact, and ultimately a really useful tool in improving the Activistas forum for ALL readers - whoever they might be!
Thanks for taking the time to share your take, Jenn, and for cheering us on at the same time. Keep it comin' as this forum progresses. Hopefully Guestivistas will be better than you're imagining!!
Posted by: LTF | January 31, 2008 at 10:24 AM
Jenn: I'm not sure if this answers your question, but Activistas is a blog. A on-line web journal so to speak. It differs from other electronic bulletin board system (e.g., Craigslist forums) where anyone and everyone can share whatever thoughts they have. This also differs from Groups like Yahoo! where you have to join. The moderator can choose whether or not to keep it private or open; and you get email updates of the information. Many forums like to keep it closed to protect it from lurkers and privacy concerns.
We chose a weblog format for many reasons but we have more control of the original post. The post can typically be original content that is developed by an Author; or it can be a question that someone emails to activistas@gmail.com. Another reason is that we want the original posts to be more thoughtful and contain more information then a couple of sentences that is written in all lowercase. We like the formality and the structure that a weblog provides.
Most of the sharing and exchange occurs in the comments. Comments typically relate back to the original post. That is open to anyone that has access to the Internet. Aside from spam, there is no censoring unless the comments are slanderous and unproductive.
Lisa: It's an excellent idea to add different perspectives into the mix. Perhaps we can just give it a chance to play out.
Posted by: hau | January 31, 2008 at 11:14 AM
thanks, everyone, for your clarification.
i've written blog columns for sites before, so the fact that original post content is regulated doesn't bother me -- having some content control and a structured format makes sense. my concern was more with how democratically the authors (or "content providers," to use the lurvly job title euphemism i keep seeing in web writing contracts!) are chosen. granted, doing a guest column here isn't a "job" in the way a paid gig is, and there's certainly a crucial element of social connection to Activistas/UM -- but it could also be really easy to let that connection take so much precedence that people who are interested don't get a shot.
obviously, this is a new venture for y'all, and you're still figuring out how you want to handle it. i'll be interested to see what sorts of responses you get, and how it develops.
Posted by: jenn | January 31, 2008 at 11:52 AM
Wouldn't it be great if the guest series was a chance for a mama to write an essay of sorts about her experience of mamahood, her thoughts, her point of view, her platform so to speak. Sort of like the Ignite Portland concept, only in writing for the blog. I looked at the first interview and found myself wanting more from Mary. She alludes to many of her experiences, and I want her to tell me about herself. I want to hear her soapbox. I want more!!
Posted by: anon | February 02, 2008 at 04:45 PM
Anon - Like it. As noted in the post about Mary, we're going to go this route for a short while, consider feedback (like yours, thanks for taking the time to share it) and tweak/expand or whatever. There are loads of interesting mamas out there to learn from, that's for sure. In the meantime, Mary has written a bit on Mombian: http://www.mombian.com/
Posted by: LTF | February 03, 2008 at 08:55 PM