Twelve Black Code Monkeys

The town I live in, Vienna, VA, has lots of things going for it. It has, I think, a small-town feel, but it’s still close to Washington, D.C. and has great services and community events. They have an official website, but there’s really no place to go online to discuss current events, local businesses, etc. When I lived in Adams Morgan there was a great and active Yahoo! Group devoted to discussing things relating to that DC neighborhood. I don’t know where else I would have found out about many of the things that went on there other than through that group. Vienna has a (printed) newsletter that’s sent out and the website, but I’m much more apt to read an email message than a newsletter, and certainly email is much quicker. So with that in mind I decided to create a Yahoo! Group for Vienna.

While many people subscribe to Yahoo! Groups, I thought that there are probably a big chunk who’ve never heard of them but might find this entry via a web search. Yahoo! Groups are mailing lists but you don’t need to access them via email. You can actually read them with a web browser. More recently Yahoo! has added RSS feeds (here’s the one for the group I just created), so you can read them also via your favorite web browser. Whether or not you are a resident (past or present) of Vienna, I would urge you to search Yahoo! Groups for your home town (or if you are in a large city, maybe even your local neighborhood). These days, people are so busy that they rarely have time for being part of an active local community, and I believe that at least having some virtual community might actually fight that trend. You may not get to see all of your “neighbors” face to face when you “meet” but that doesn’t mean that you can’t rely on each other for great information and support with community-related issues. If such a group doesn’t exist for your area, why not go ahead and start one yourself? It’s easy and you might really be able to create a terrific resource for those in your area.