It's alive! the Fan District Hub

In advance of the press release that will go out later, I want to introduce my latest get-rich-so-slow-I’ll-probably-be-dead-first scheme to the blogosphere. After publishing SLANTblog for over three years I’ve finally learned enough about this realm that I feel ready to do what I originally set out to do -- create a new publication that will bring me from my old days in the alternative media biz into the present.

Well, here it is: Click here to visit the Fan District Hub.

The Fan District Hub is a descendant of the kiosk in the town square. In this case it exists on the Internet in a blog format. Its purpose is to facilitate communication in a way that benefits the commonweal of the neighborhood, as did its counterpart -- the kiosk bearing posted notices -- in another age.

As it evolves the Fan District Hub will be a hybrid of sorts -- community blog first, but part online magazine and part experimental thing that will probably have a name for itself one day. Its success will come from its ability to serve its primary audience/community, which will be people who live in, who do business in, who go to school in, who go to church in, or who frequently choose to recreate in the Fan District.

Yet, the Fan District is not simply a bunch of nice buildings. In many ways it is the cultural epicenter of the greater Richmond area, with Virginia Commonwealth University as the biggest player in that quaking metaphor.

So, I invite my readers from the blogosphere to visit the Fan District Hub. Leave comments there, or here, or email me, if you like.

Note: As I have no idea of how to write in programmers’ lingo, PharrOut’s Ross Catrow (also of RVABlogs and West of the Blvd. News) played an indispensable role in getting this web site from an idea to virtual reality. Others helped. I’ll have more on that aspect of this new adventure later. Still, at this point I must say for all to see, “Thanks Ross.”

One reason for making this move now is to join the community blog wave while it‘s still getting started. Here in Richmond, in addition to Ross’ WotBN, we also already have the Church Hill People’s News and Hills and Heights underway. For several reasons I believe that community blogging is going to be a major direction for where blogging is going. In the next year or two, I think we’ll probably hear as much about the impact of community blogs, and networks of such entities, as we have heard in the last couple of years about political blogs.

And now, aw-a-y we go...