Prometheus 6

You probably won't see many posts from me between Sept. 27 and Oct. 1. I'll be at ASALH's 91st Annual Convention in Atlanta. In fact, I'll be on a panel...a little more detail a little later.

There's a lot of stuff going on in and around the Convention. Some of you may remember when I used to go out every Friday to a lecture, usually at Columbia University, usually on something sociological. This is almost a week of the stuff, a broad array of subjects, and I just found the scheduling tool that lets me browse the sessions and mark the ones I'm interested in. This is vacation time for me too...it is conceivable the Convention may not fill my whole day. Which is to say I'll have plenty of opportunities to get online and post but probably won't.

Though it would probably be a good idea to post my impressions of the sessions I attend. Forgive me, this is one of those "on the fly" posts.

Anyway, the panel is called "The Cyberspace Diaspora: Black Communities Online." It's scheduled for an hour and 45 minutes on Friday, just before lunch. There will be three presentations but only two presenters; as a side effect of that numerical imbalance I find myself listed as chairing the panel. That I've done few panels and none for academics does make for a couple of butterflies in the stomach but there's plenty of time to squash them.

This is how I described what I would cover.

I’ll be discussing the online communities I’ve been a part of, with particular focus on two that I had significant influence on.

• Black Issues/Black Experience conference on RIME, a computer bulletin board network
• Prometheus 6, a public Internet weblog

In each case I was creating a free discussion space for Black people, but the conditions I had to work under were totally different. In the first case I was a “conference host” with no real power in the network other than to report violations of network rules and arguing the case when the violator inevitably denied the offence. In the second case I was, and remain, the sole owner and operator of the web site, which operates at my descretion.

Other topics will include my impression of others’ efforts at creating Black online personae and responding to white folks in Black spaces.

I'll tell you about the other presentations later in the week...see the category tag.

The presentation is titled, "Race, Power, and Self-Presentation in Internet Discussion Spaces." I didn't write that, but it's a good generalization so I'll roll with it. I do wonder what folks would expect to see covered.

Yes, I'm looking for suggestions and questions. And I guess it's only fair to answer whatever questions...