Blogrolls are a good way to list a bunch of blogs/websites. WordPress has pretty much always had some form of the blogroll.
The problem here is that it’s not a good representation of what PimpMyClarion is doing. That sounds pretentious. It probably is. But hear me out.
A web _presence_ is even harder to describe than a bunch of blogs.
More than this, I want to pull together a true representation of the Clarion World.
The Clarion World Project.
This has been floating around for a while now. In my head, in my notepads, on google docs :). I’ve fleshed out most of the basic ideas.
It’s a big vision. Something more than what you find in a blogroll. Something more than a database of company names and websites.
The Clarion World Project encompasses some cool technologies.
We make heavy use of Google Earth (and Google Maps) in the project. You would download a single app, which would be based around Google Earth.
Imagine searching the Clarion World Project for "South African Products" and the Google Earth swirls around, flying past good old Oz, zooming to the right level to show in slick 3-d images (cartoony?) all the companies in South Africa who build / use Clarion products.
Obviously, you’d differentiate between the builders and the users. But both of them are part of the Project.
For a few months I’ve been pondering how to bring this about. Well no. First, and still, I ask whether it’s worth the effort. Do we really need something like this? I mean, I can hype it all i want, but i guess it does break down into a big database of names and numbers.
It’s not though. There can be far more to this. It can be the jugganaut that drives forward the community into new exciting places.
Imagine being able to have something like the Clarion World Project for newcomers.
Imagine at conferences, instead of getting people’s details on paper, you fire up a big projected version of the Clarion World Project and get people to enter stuff there and then. Straight up to the servers.
Of course, at this stage, it takes a bit of imagining. I’m good at that, seeing what isn’t there .. what _could_ be.
I’m not calling out for any help at the moment. This needs more thought. I’d like to get some official backing, and pull in as many resources as possible. There are people who’ve worked with Google apis, and people with databases of people. There are folk who I think would be eager to help.
This will not of itself build the community further. But it will be an awesome tool. It will set us apart from other development communities. Without a doubt. But more, it will be the people behind it that make the clarion community unique.
Enough. I’ll ramble on in another post. Cheers. It’s enough for now to tell you about it.
The Clarion World Project.
