Hey Ahadadians!

I’d like to draw your attention to a project that Jesse and I have been developing for a long while now: The Small Press Exchange (www.smallpressexchange.com).

The Small Press Exchange is an augmented social Network formed with a number of questions in mind: Could writers and poets better strengthen their relationships through online communities by better connecting people to others with whom they share affinities? Could they do this so they can more effectively exchange information and self-organize? Could such a system help to redefine what it means to be a small press publisher today?

Thus, the Small Press Excange was built with the interest of the independent community in mind, in order to facilitate introductions between people who share affinities or complementary capabilities across social networks—it was intended to be a tool to help extend creativity among individuals and enhance collaboration among those who share a common interest.

The Small Press Exchange has three main objectives:

1) To create a system that enables more efficient and effective knowledge sharing between people across institutional, geographic, and social boundaries;

2) To establish a form of persistent online identity that supports the public commonalities and the values of the independent literary community; and,

3) To enhance the ability of poets and writers to form relationships and self-organize around shared interests in order to better engage in the creative process.

So we ask for your participation in the creation of online ontologies and taxonomies that will help shape the stucture of this community! The Small Press Exchange we envisioned would be achieved in an incremental manner, started among a relatively small group of participants, and gradually adopted by larger online community systems as they see fit.

The Small Press Exchange will be built on open standards, an initiative that would coordinate the efforts of many for the benefit of all.

Check it out at www.smallpressexchange.com.