Last week I participated in a Seattle Blogwalk (which I haven't yet written about- but soon!) one of the questions we asked was who had blogged about Hurricane Katrina. I raised my hand and talked about using my personal blog to let people know that our friend David Stitcher made it out of the city. I wondered at the time if there was any chance that someone who knows Dave, besides a regular reader, would be able to find that post.
Since, I've been following some of what Nancy White, Alexandra Samuel and many others are doing around building awareness, volunteerism and community participation in the aftermath of the devastation.
When it comes to testing the online tools we talk about so much, few things can compare to how they are used in these types of situations. Like people and agencies, they get tested.
I was interested to see that Alexandra has provided a guide for how people can use tags to increase the discoverability of vital information through tagging-- related to Katrina.
With the Katrina tagging guide, she is lowering the barriers to understanding how people can participate in the recovery online, in plain English. She even includes code that can be used for the Technorati tags.
In the face of this disaster, I hope that the blog world can collectively play some part in the recovery by increasing access to vital information. I applaud the community that has risen to the challenge.