07-05-2011, 01:11 PM
Stein, you make some excellent points! I can appreciate the idea of KISA's. In last night's post I almost got into the reason why this idea is important to me. Today with the benefit of a better night's sleep (despite the war zone outside) I will say more.
Some of the ideas shared on this thread so far point to the reality that the internet has changed how we congregate and share ideas as modelers. How we interact on the forums is different than how we interact in person, for better or worse. I concede that many aspects are the same, as you have rightly pointed out with PM's.
A helpful idea is that of immigrants vs natives to the digital world. Immigrants are those who grew up without the internet and for them the only way to interact with other modelers was through either round-robin groups or the NMRA or the local hobby shop coffee pot. Maybe attending a show and getting involved with a club was the way to go.
Natives are those who have grown up not knowing what life was like before the internet and whose entry point into the hobby may very well be a forum such as this. While the former options for interaction are still there and doubtless will continue for another generation at least (if they ever go away entirely), the prefered means of communication for natives remains through digital media with only occasional person-to-person contact.
I submit the idea that the NMRA itself and in particular, the MMR acheivement program is an immigrant idea, something that belongs to the pre-internet era that has little traction in this new era. And just like any revolution, the new residents of the world must decide what to keep from the old world and what to construct wholly in the new. I think as the old ideas lose relevance, new ideas will emerge naturally. But I also believe leadership in the hobby (like what's going on with Model Railroad Hobbyist e-zine) is necessary to create new structures and shape new common ideas.
So some of what motivates me to think about these things is the desire to make sense of this new world of hobby-related communication and shape something new. Another aspect of why I am interested in this is that it is what I do in 'real' life, I help folks make sense of their world by taking scattered ideas and bringing them together into something coherant around a central core of beliefs (Christianity, in my particular case).
Another motivation is that I'm tired of the same old worn-out discussions about bashing the NMRA, the death of the hobby, the loss of the good ole shake-the-box kits, etc. It's time for something new and I think we at Big Blue have got something good going here that can be the nucleus for some really important, meaningful steps forward out of the old and into the new.
I'll post more later but this is a start. I've been thinking about this for a while so there's alot in there to spew forth.
Galen
Some of the ideas shared on this thread so far point to the reality that the internet has changed how we congregate and share ideas as modelers. How we interact on the forums is different than how we interact in person, for better or worse. I concede that many aspects are the same, as you have rightly pointed out with PM's.
A helpful idea is that of immigrants vs natives to the digital world. Immigrants are those who grew up without the internet and for them the only way to interact with other modelers was through either round-robin groups or the NMRA or the local hobby shop coffee pot. Maybe attending a show and getting involved with a club was the way to go.
Natives are those who have grown up not knowing what life was like before the internet and whose entry point into the hobby may very well be a forum such as this. While the former options for interaction are still there and doubtless will continue for another generation at least (if they ever go away entirely), the prefered means of communication for natives remains through digital media with only occasional person-to-person contact.
I submit the idea that the NMRA itself and in particular, the MMR acheivement program is an immigrant idea, something that belongs to the pre-internet era that has little traction in this new era. And just like any revolution, the new residents of the world must decide what to keep from the old world and what to construct wholly in the new. I think as the old ideas lose relevance, new ideas will emerge naturally. But I also believe leadership in the hobby (like what's going on with Model Railroad Hobbyist e-zine) is necessary to create new structures and shape new common ideas.
So some of what motivates me to think about these things is the desire to make sense of this new world of hobby-related communication and shape something new. Another aspect of why I am interested in this is that it is what I do in 'real' life, I help folks make sense of their world by taking scattered ideas and bringing them together into something coherant around a central core of beliefs (Christianity, in my particular case).
Another motivation is that I'm tired of the same old worn-out discussions about bashing the NMRA, the death of the hobby, the loss of the good ole shake-the-box kits, etc. It's time for something new and I think we at Big Blue have got something good going here that can be the nucleus for some really important, meaningful steps forward out of the old and into the new.
I'll post more later but this is a start. I've been thinking about this for a while so there's alot in there to spew forth.
Galen
I may not be a rivet counter, but I sure do like rivets!