Feb 27, 2009

Who all is in this network anyway?

by Anonymous

Marcus looking up community in his OED with a magnifying glass

Once upon a time, some guy named Gordon got together with some guy named Marcus and said, "Dude, let's start a blog network!"

We had no idea what that would mean.

So now, we've patched this thing together with various third party services, volunteer leaders, a few paid techies, and lots of love--at least as much love as can be sent through the net. We know community is a weird concept. And we know virtual community can feel kind of bogus sometimes, but we don't care. People are connecting online, and we want to do our best to help those connections seem as real as possible.

I'm not really interested in doomsayers who think virtual community is fake. Heck. In this world, ALL community is fake. I believe we'll get something like real community in the end when all things are restored, whatever that looks like. (I usually imagine New York City with a lot less trash and a much lower crime rate.)

To the point. We're in the process of restructuring the network, but it's going to take a bit. In the meantime, we've done our best to simplify and clarify the network lists. Here they are in a quick bulleted list:

Featured posts nearly always link out to someone in the network. If you don't know where to start, this is a good place.
Featured blogs are ones that we feel do a good job of exploring our four categories: Culture, Faith, Family, and Work.
You can also head straight for the fire hose with our list of all active blogs in the network.
As a bonus, we created a new collection of RSS feeds from non-network Friends of HighCallingBlogs.com.

Now let me be really honest. Sometimes we make mistakes. Sometimes we deactivate people on accident. (Usually this happens if someone has gone inactive and has stopped posting.) If for some reason, you are a network blogger and you cannot find yourself in any of these lists, don’t hesitate to contact us.

We’ll look into as quickly as we can. Promise!