Tsunami Anniversary Trek: T-Minus 2 Days

He said, "When you draw people out, you'll find that everybody has something to tell you."

That's Doris Drucker speaking at her husband Peter Drucker's eulogy in Claremont (in the hills of east Bay Area) this past Saturday. The blurb also says how Drucker championed that "marketing and innovation should come before worries about finances." If you read my bio, you know how much Drucker's ideas have rippled through my own.

Drucker's quote reminds me of one reason I chose the final photo in my slides to be one of Po Bronson (the photo was primarily chosen because of Bronson's Writers Grotto for the slide titled "The (Accelerated) Salon Effect".)

“I live in a different world now. Or one I perceive differently, thanks to the openness of the people I’ve met. I feel like I’ve rediscovered my awe. Let me explain what that means. I used to look at the world through the eye of a magazine writer, filtering out the ordinary while waiting for the sensational and buzz-worthy to trigger my muse. There  were so many people I didn’t listen to, so many stories I passed on, because I couldn’t imagine them grabbing the attention of news-hungry editors.

By writing this book – as a book, not as a series for magazines – I have opened up my filter and learned to see the extraordinary in the once castaway ordinary. Good stories used to be rare; now they’re everywhere, and better than anything I used to find…

If some of the stories are amazing, it suggests to me that amazing stories must be everywhere. If stories are inspiring, then inspiring stories are everywhere. If the stories are ordinary – which is how I think of them – then many ordinary people, everywhere, are daring to be true to themselves.” - Po Bronson, What Should I Do With My Life?

BONUS: Red Herring covers the Emergency Syndication panel at Syndicate. Kudos to Brian for organizing and moderating. BTW, he's part of a slew of folks in the disaster & recovery & web 2.0 is the revenge of English majors (his words, but I agree) salon. He was the first person to financially support this TsunamiAnniversary.com project with a small, private donation which is really how most things from independent films to disaster aid really are funded.

I loved Brian's SOS theme. Share Our Stories: "Can we tell stories with such power that we can actually change the ending."

p.s. I serendipitiously found the photo by Googling "San Francisco literary salons". Freaky enough it's from Craig Newmark's (of Craigslist) photo album.

tags social media citizen journalism journalism blogging disaster relief katrina tsunami syndicate

Comments

[P.H.]

Hi Evelyn - read about your trip to back to SEAsia. You might be interested in this:

http://psdblog.worldbank.org/psdblog/aceh_diary/index.html

Also, Daniel Drezner is writing about this today: http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/002465.html