An Anniversary

December 29 2010, 7:56am

Yesterday was the 14th anniversary of trianglerock.com, or rather the site that would eventually become trianglerock.com, a few years further down the road.

That means it was also the anniversary of an off-and-on tradition wherein I spend a couple of weeks around the winter holidays working on [non-work-related] nerd projects. If there's a site I've built, a major feature addition, a redesign, etc. over the past 14 years, it was more than likely done between December 15th and January 4th or so.

So anyway, trianglerock.com, or "the alt.music.chapel-hill guide to the triangle" originally emerged out of the realization that I was missing shows that I would've liked to have seen. (I remember the exact moment: standing on E. Franklin St. in front of a kiosk, seeing a flyer for a show that had happened a night or two earlier.)

I figured the best way to resolve this problem was to build & maintain a list in some sort of semi-organized fashion, and I'd clearly already been influenced enough by the DIY/open-source ethic to realize that it made even more sense to make it public.

Here's my original announcement to the alt.music.chapel-hill UseNet group.

If you look at the original site, or what's left of it anyway, you'll see a couple of things. First, it was butt-ugly. Even for 1996. Second, I tried in a number of places to foreground the notion that it was a collaborative effort, both by including posts of interest from other folks, and soliciting more.

Ultimately it turned into something altogether different than that. Participation in a.m.c-h waned (though it still exists today), and the tools for internet participation became ubiquitous. The Blog Revolution established a paradigm wherein everybody did their own thing.

This winter would've been a good opportunity to do another ground-up rebuild of trianglerock.com, but instead I've spent the past couple of weeks working on some awesome computing projects at WXDU, most of which will be invisible to non-DJs. But they've been rewarding & fun.

But I guess I should put myself on the spot by committing, fully 1 year in advance, to do something interesting with trianglerock.com next winter, in time for its 15th anniversary.