Rivers: steeped in American history

This is not highly relevant to our website redesign, but there are a couple of things that I wanted to highlight with RiversandCreeks’ recent posting, Rivers in Art.

First of all, the blog post was written by American Whitewater’s Pacific Northwest Stewardship Director, Tom O’keefe. Secondly, it’s a great piece reflecting on a recent trip to Washington, DC - the post truly captures the social and cultural implications of rivers in American history.

And, lastly, what I’d like to mention is that aside from an employee writing about his relationship to rivers, the blog itself seems to reflect what I know about American Whitewater: they're a strong community of river enthusiasts.

I’m not sure how many staff members keep blogs in their personal time (or if the organization has a blog policy in place), but I was talking to Tom last week and learned a little more about their efforts online as an organization. Apparently, one person oversees the site and the community contributes to the development of the pages. In fact, there are approximately 300 contributors to the site. That’s a nice number of worker bees to have on your side to help out with the editing and updating of the various pages.

As a conservation organization first, I wonder how we can create a little more dialogue online with our community. And, I can't help but going back to the idea of something along the lines of a Riverpedia, similar to what Techsoup has done with their glossary.

I know we’re the expert advocates when it comes to rivers, but if we’re talking about Fluvial Geomorphology, wouldn’t we want the Fluvial Geomorphology experts to weigh in on the term?