2,996 Project

A few days ago I posted about a worth project that I had signed up for: an effort to get 2,996 bloggers — one for each victim of 9/11 — to create a tribute. One blogger, one tribute.

When I signed up for it, I asked the organizer (D. Challener Roe) if there was anything I could do to help. I mentioned that I was a technical sort of guy — which prompted him to ask if I could help automate the process of signing bloggers up. At the time he asked me, he had manually assigned over 700 bloggers, by reading emails, copying the details into a little database, and typing response emails. Even a few minutes work, multiplied by 700 (or 2,996!) times becomes a real challenge.

Well, after talking it over with him I realized that a fairly simple little web application would do the trick — and that’s something I know a little about! Being able to contribute to such a worthwhile project gives me great satisfaction — and the fact that I got to exercise my skills in the process was just icing on the cake. Even better, I got to explore some new things I’d never done before, like working with images in JavaScript.

Earlier today, my little web application went “live”. If you visit that site, you can sign up (and if you’re a blogger, please do!) for the 2,996 project. Or you can just look through the list of the 9/11 victim, see their pictures, read about them, research them on the web, and see which bloggers are doing a tribute.

Drop on over for a visit, won’t you?