Dave Lester’s Finding America

While I’m not as hooked into the local music scene as I was in college, I have fond memories of attending concerts in crowded bars, playing in bands, and having a group of friends that shared a passion for the music. I’m young enough that the internet playing a crucial role in building that local music community — it was where we learned about each other’s projects, listened to music, and made plans to meet up by leveraging message boards and the tools at our disposal. These activities persist on the web today, but at that time it was a little more raw — there weren’t central websites to store your music, nor social networking websites to create relationships with listeners (although, myspace did eventually play a critical role in that). It was DIY.

There’s one feature of the scene that stands out in my memories — the self-described online “street teams” of local bands that would go around town hanging up posters, telling their friends about shows, and proudly wearing pins. While street teams existed before, their activities were in some ways amplified and more visible on the net. It gave fans a role in the promotion of the band, and a mutual feeling of involvement/dedication to the music. Leveraging the power of simple online tools, they were able to coordinate and promote shows, as well as create a stronger sense of community among members. The street team community grew through its online presence and promotion, and in many ways acted as a social hub for us while we were in college.

So I wonder, can you take the best features of those online street teams of the past, and apply their approaches to digital history? You already have the history enthusiasts, and the Internet isn’t going anywhere. What else do you need? What could a DIY digital history street team look like? I understand two purposes of the street teams I knew growing up: to promote the activities of the band, and to also develop a cohesive physical community. Likewise, engagement and building community are critical in public and digital history, so perhaps this is an analogy worth exploring further. In the least, it provides a point of entry for discussing grassroots and community-based, highly collaborative, DIY digital history. I get excited just thinking about it.

How can we organize digital history street teams, whose passion and local interest drives them to explore our personal pasts and share with others? What are ways that we can leverage today’s technologies to both promote and define that digital history community? While bands have a very specific purpose (to perform music), what are activities of these history enthusiasts? Can we engage casual history enthusiasts in local communities by using simple digital tools? How can these street teams grow organically?

I have some distinct ideas for how we can go about this, but before I get ahead of myself — what do you think about this idea? What are examples that you can share of activities that may already fit this vision?