Become the Media has a purpose. To educate bloggers, journo-programmers, poets, in managing and developing his or her own publishing infrastructure.
The reason I can’t sleep tonight, and am writing this post instead, is that the purpose finally coalesced. From the start, I registered Become the Media as a repository of knowledge to help others publish to the web. Originally, I accomplished this through my blog, Radio UserLand: The Missing Manual. Helping others publish with the powerful tool, Radio UserLand, was my way of giving back.
Now, years later, I’m happy to have found new direction. Based on the idea that Dave Winer puts forth in his post about educating the journo-programmer, I see Become the Media’s future. This time around, I won’t focus solely on a blogging tool. I’ll focus on a top down approach to guerilla style digital journalism. A one-stop shop for journo-programmers, bloggers, and poets.
Some of the sections I envision..
* Register a domain name
* Configure DNS
* Setup a cloud account with Amazon (for now)
* Get up and running with the OPML Editor
* Setup a river of news
* Install a River2 minimal blogging tool
* Attain an Adjix URL shortener account
* Learn how to use your own domain name for short links
* Push your Radio2 minimal blogging posts to Twitter and beyond
These are just some of the topics I envision. Each section will be screenshot-laden with lots of hand-holding.
What’s the point of all this? To teach people how to avoid the hamster cages (silos) that remove control over our content. In other words, if you Become the Media, then silos such as Facebook and Twitter can’t silence you. By taking matters into our own hands, we can reboot the news.