Why care about email?

I got my first email address in the very late 80s. I was an intern at a government agency. I learned a lot there: how to sequence DNA, how to handle radioactive material, how to handle human pathogens, and how to send email. I got my first non-work non-school address in the mid-90s. One of the first things I did was join some mailing lists.
One of them was a list for folks who had pet rabbits. I met a lot of people there, both online and in person. As with many people we meet through a shared interest as our interest wanes the relationships change. Some relationships were maintained, but some of us lost touch with one another. Moves, job changes, email address changes, they all affect our ability to maintain relationships online. I kept in touch with some, one was the maid of honor at my wedding and a few years ago I was the maid of honor at hers. I lost track of others.
 

FlowerBunny
The indomitable Flower Bunny

A few years ago I managed to re-connect with some of those email friends through Facebook. It’s been great to see them and interact with them again. Many of us have moved on from bunnies to other pets. We’re no longer students. We have families and kids. And so on and so on. Facebook has given us a chance to be together again, and rekindle those friendships.
Today, I found out one of those friends passed away. Someone I’ve known for 20 years. Someone who was an absolute lifeline when I was making some big decisions and some hard career choices. 2 weeks ago she went to the ER for some shoulder pain. One of her last FB posts was complaining about how the Drs were treating her pain like a heart attack. It wasn’t a heart problem; it was undiagnosed melanoma.
I’m somewhat in shock. It’s hard to think I’m no longer going to hear her stories of crazy cartoon dog and the sneaky brat dog. I can’t imagine Facebook without her beautiful photos of the beach where she lives. On top of that, there’s a bit of oddness. How can I feel the loss of someone I never actually met in person so strongly? All of our interactions were online. And, yet, my life is better for her being in it. And I will miss her.
This. THIS is why I do what I do. The internet has a way of introducing us to things and people we never knew were out there. It enriches our lives. It allows us to create community with people who live thousands or tens of thousands of miles away. Or some that live right next door. Or 20 minutes away on the coast.
In order to keep building communities online we must keep the online space open and viable. That does mean shutting down abuse and abusers. That does mean policing the space and enforcing rules and keeping users safe. It has to. Otherwise any chance of community will be destroyed.
The communities we build now will still be around in 20 years. They may not be BBSes, or USENET, or mailing lists, or Facebook, or Twitter, but they will be around in whatever space we have in the future. These communities are important and they are worth protecting and policing.
Goodbye, Cary. You will be missed.

I cannot feel the Bern.
More on ARC

Related Posts

Phone call of the week

I phoneforblogreceived a message on our 800 number. “This is Mark from a-website.example. Your customers are complaining to me that they are not getting my mail. And you’re blocking mail from me. Explain this to me!”
 
 
I called him back and left a message: “I think you’re confused and I probably can’t help you.”
A few minutes later, Mark returns my call.
L: Hi, this is laura.
M: Who are you? You called me, you must be from Clearwire!
L: No, I’m not with Clearwire, I’m with WttW.
M: Then why is your phone number on the Clearwire website?
L: I don’t know, but this isn’t Clearwire. The Clearwire website is redirecting to Sprint. They got bought out a while ago.
M: Redirecting to Sprint? What does that mean? Your phone number is on Clearwire’s website. You must be with Clearwire.
L: No, really, I’m not.
M: Why is your phone number on their website?
L: I don’t know. But this is not Clearwire. (I start searching the blog because I remember some post somewhere about Clearwire.)
M: Well, who are you?
L: I run a delivery consulting firm. Is it possible you found my website and the blog post that says all clearwire.net addresses are being discontinued April 15, 2015?
M: They’re gone?
L: Yes, for more than a year now.
M: Oh.
scene
That blog post is the #1 google hit if you search for clearwire.net.
 

Read More

Network glitches and corrupted VMs

I had a bit of a interesting Friday. I was so glad it was finally the weekend. Saturday we did a bunch of errands, including go visit our servers. See, we’ve been upgrading infrastructure to implement a second type of backup system. Saturday we were doing the last set of upgrades so we could install over the weekend.
Yes, we do all our own networking and racking.
12974536_10206263292444901_7498678361263518784_n
Saturday evening Steve is installing the new backup software. This is awesome backup software. It backs up the entire virtual machine. If we lose a virtual machine, we can just reload the entire thing and it will be back again.
Except while installing the software, there is a weird network glitch. Said network glitch caused the system to crash. The system crashes hard. The system crash corrupts some of the data on disk. The data on disk is our virtual machine files. Files are in read only mode and won’t fsck automatically.
We lose most of our production virtual machines.  We’re off the air.
IronyBlog
Possibly this was tragic, not ironic. I dunno, it’s been a long weekend.
We lost a bunch of production virtual machines to the disc corruption. We haven’t lost any data, but it’s taking some time to rebuild the machines and pull data from the other backup system and get it installed.
That means some of our websites and services, like tools.wordtothewise.com are down. It may mean you saw some bounces if you sent us mail over the weekend. Mail is back and we are communicating with the outside world again.
Steve’s working through our other services as fast as possible to get them back up and running.
(If massive server issues weren’t enough, one of the cats got a UTI so we’re having to pill her twice a day. Then last night managed to puke so hard she passed out briefly. Poor thing. She’s doing better this morning.)

Read More

Email in 2020

time_report_forblogLate last year Litmus invited me to contribute to a whitepaper they were putting together about email in 2020. Today, they released Email Marketing in 2020. I am honored to be included in the list of experts that they chose.
One of the things I find so so much fun in participating in this type of joint project is seeing what other people’s visions are. When Chad first contacted us, his request was very simple. He wanted 400-ish words on what we thought would change. We all approached it from our own perspectives. The final document really touches on a wide range of changes and gives an bright and rosy view of the future of email.
It’s hard to imagine I’ve had email for more than 25 years. It’s become such a fundamental and critical part of my life. I mean, sure I’m an email professional but it’s more than that. Some of my best friends I met over email. I’ve gotten multiple jobs based on my presence on email discussion lists. Steve and I met around email. One of the fun bits of M3AAWG is that I get to see friends I first met almost 20 years ago over email.
Email has really changed in the last decade. It is now a critical part of daily life for many people. Even social networking would be nowhere without an email address. Email really is the key to the digital kingdom. That’s not going to change.
Email being the key to the digital kingdom is a challenge. It lets nefarious people into our homes and into our lives and into our computers. A lot of very smart people are working on how to make email safer for us. I think it will be much safer in 2020, through the hard work and dedication of a lot of people.
I strongly encourage you to download the Email Marketing in 2020 white paper from Litmus. There is a lot of insight. It will be fun to see how much of what was said becomes reality.

Read More