Space Shoes

In 1998 -- six years before Facebook sucked all the attention from general purpose online communities -- I started Brainstorms, a web-forum-based virtual community where it was possible to get tossed out if you act like an asshole. I've written about how governance evolved there and in four other communities. It's still going! Before social media came along, we had around 500 active participants. We gathered by the dozens in San Francisco, Memphis, Amsterdam, and Sydney.

Facebook, Blogs, Twitter, Tumblr came along and the Brainstorms population dwindled. I'd say we have 60 regulars now. Of course, twenty seven years later we are mostly old people. So if you are 60+ and interested in mostly civil conversations about everything in a private, unsurveilled webforum, you can email me at howard@rheingold.com and I'll see that you are set up with an account.

Which is all to say that the shoes are for my friend Val, who was with Brainstorms from the beginning, and joined Rheingold Associates, which designed and facilitated online communities 1999-2001. She took over administrative chores a couple decades ago. Thanks, Val!