I watched the story unfold on my computer. I’m not much for TV these days for my news - so when I saw the original CNet post for help in finding James Kim in Oregon last week, my first reaction was the correct one.
At the time I thought it was remarkable that an APB could be sent out so efficiently by those concerned for James and his family. It helps, for sure, that James worked at CNet. It also helped that he was loved in the community of technology writers and editors who could get the message out to all the right people in all the right places that they were missing. Of course, this is not proven by my getting the message in San Diego, but there is little doubt that getting the message out on CNet, and then Wired, and then CNN and MSNBC until it became a part of this week’s national news when we would learn of his tragic death only days after his family’s salvation.
Two days ago, I learned of James’ death and read about it many times over as Lifehacker, Tech Crunch, and many of the news feeds I read posted obituaries. I read and re-read the memorial that CNet posted on their homepage, having dedicated the home page to him and his family for the day.
Then yesterday, I got an email forwarded to me by Edward who himself recieved a forward from Di-Ann over at Platial where Rafe Needleman from CNet asked if sites like theirs would be willing to help create a tool that was requested by the CNet HR department to aid in emergencies like this. The tragic events of James Kim’s last ten days help tell a compelling story about how inadequate technology can be when and where we need it most. But the question still remains: what can we do to help?
To help what? Prevent events like this from happening again? Aid in search and discovery missions? Improve on disaster response, missing persons reporting and search and rescue organization? Yes, yes and, most definitely, yes.
As yet, I haven’t heard back from Platial, who seems to be taking the lead on this. I am genuinely interested in becoming a part of an effort to save lives and to answer that question. We will figure out what can be done in situations like this. As I learn more about this project, I will share more here. Until then, if you’re the praying kind, say a prayer for James, his family and those at CNet and around the world who miss him. If you’re not the praying kind, say one anyway.
One of the things I’m really interested in accomplishing for Dandelife is good visual explanations of our lives. I’ve been able to attract a lot of visitors and get a lot of members largely due to the fact that the timeline does a good job of displaying temporal data. I found TuneGlue last month and thought that the way that it grouped bands who were similar is a good visual technique. There are lots more over at infosthetics.com too.
