ampersand Nevertheless

Community: my first steps

Posted by Alexandra on (about a 2 minute read).

Time flies. 15 years ago I published my first community fuelled website. It's long gone of course but I can still tell the story.

It all started with an anniversary

One of my all-time favourite children's TV show went into it's 25th year at the time. I still watched it on a regular basis and so I had an idea. Why not send a special greeting card? One that would be fun to make and a bit different?

There was the plan

I had been playing with HTML and spent a decent amount of time on mailing-lists and in usenet groups. So I sent out a call to action to some German groups and asked for small text contributions to the greeting card . And I asked people to spread the idea. I don't remember how many people replied but in the end I had a nice collection. I charmed a friend to upload my orange page to the tiny webspace he had available at university.

Lesson learned

Looking back it appears to be a small thing but it taught me something important: if you have an idea, run with it. If others like it, run the whole way. The tools have changed and my approach to community has matured but at the heart of it, this lesson still stands. (Thank you, Birte, for reminding me today!)