creating community awards

Beth Kanter, from Beth's Blog (of course), presented the Bloggers Who Create Community Award to Small Dots!

Beth named three bloggers to receive the award -- the other two are Amy Sample Ward's Version of NpTech and Michele Martin, The Bamboo Project. If you don't know these blogs, I strongly encourage you to check them out.

Here's what Beth said about Small Dots:

Beth works in the arts and nonprofits world. She's only been blogging for a couple of months, but already you can see the lively community and conversation happening on her blog. I appreciate her deep engagement in conversation, listening, and cross-disciplinary thinking.

Thank you! I am energized beyond words to be writing in this new blog-space (I've actually been writing a personal blog -- and contributing to several group blogs -- for many years) and by the community that supports it. The encouragement I've received from other bloggers -- Beth Kanter in particular -- has been astonishing, and I am very grateful to her and to everyone who reads and comments.

I'm going to continue the pay-it-forward thread of this award and confer it on:

Connie Bensen

Connie is the community manager for ACDSee, and has a lot of very thoughtful and valuable insight to share. Her blog covers a lot of ground with a lot of verve, and is one of my favorite reads these days. I admire her willingness to share her experiences of what works and what doesn't, especially for the web worker and the community manager.

Len Edgerly

Len is a prolific and engaging podcaster and technology advocate. He is interested, as am I, in ways to bring technology to artists and arts organizations in thoughtful, practical ways, and I learn a lot from him. I admire his curiosity and open, inquiring mind - and how he shares his interest with us in a variety of media.

Jeremiah Owyang

I feel almost presumptuous giving Jeremiah this award, but I think his blog is such an excellent source of inspiration, node of thought, and hub of activity that I just can't omit him from my list. Jeremiah writes about social media, emerging web technologies, and the ongoing evolution of online communities, and I deeply admire his adept use of a variety of different technologies to draw his community together and provoke meaningful discussion.

Thank you to these bloggers and to everyone I've met and interacted with in 2007. I can't wait to see what we cook up together in 2008.