MyKnet.org

Looks like we've got the ball rolling.  Phillipp I think your comments about power are really useful in the context of this paper.  Maybe it's a thread that ties our three sections together?

Brandi / Adam / Philipp I hope these messages to some of the folks who I have watched over the years of myknet.org, help you on your journey to produce a killer paper.

Some thoughts as I sent these messages early this morning to possible key informants include 

• each of the people I wrote to this morning have a myknet.org web site that in and of itself tells a story about their personal development it has been my pleasure to witness how so many of these young people have grown over the years. Many of the people I wrote to, I have never met but if I ever had the pleasure to meet them, I would feel right at home talking with them about their experiences and memories
• these people are only my little web of my personal myknet.org experience at different times over the years, I sat in my home spending a few hours visiting homepages by starting with just one of these folks pages and traveling to the links on their pages, that then in turn take me to another story and finding myself inside a very special world of people and happenings that I never knew about until those visits they are always an interesting, sometimes troubling, journey to learn more about the happenings of others (including my own kids [smiles])
• Hopefully some of them check these e-mail addresses but often they do not, using other e-mail addresses for their contact information so this is a hit and miss effort by trying to contact people using their K-Net e-mail account but also often one person can lead you to so many others that they are in touch with. So be sure to ask everyone for people they think would be good informants for this paper. As well, I am hoping that we can get some of these young people sharing information in this discussion environment.
• Did I tell you the story about my niece, Jessica Beaton (jessicabeaton@knet.ca), who is a medical student at the University of Ottawa. Last winter, she decided she wanted to do a one week clinical placement up in the north working on a First Nation. I put her in touch with a local doctor who worked in one of the northern communities. She wrote asking me about the community and such. So I decided to check out the last name of a particular family name that I knew from that community on the myknet.org homepages. I started visiting some of these homepages each of them told a story and also provided links to others. It was a fascinating journey for me (also very troubling) anyway, I introduced this concept to my niece and pointed her to two of these family names and she went touring their sites. She said it was quite the experience for her to read what the people were writing on their pages. I understand that she got into quite a few discussions in Ottawa before her trip about what she was reading, some of them quite challenging given the environment where she lives and goes to school. Anyway, when she finally did get to the community she felt quite comfortable visiting with the people and her perspective was much more open to what they were experiencing. It was an interesting experience for me

Thoughts??

Brian