If the Creek Don't Rise Released!

A year ago this month my neighbor, Rita Williams, published a book she'd been working on for some time. She called it If the Creek Don't Rise and it's a memoir about her time growing up with her grandmother in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. We were all very excited for her not only because she got a great book published but also because it was very well received. Rita got an incredible break when Oprah Winfrey reviewed her book in O Magazine. Having someone so famous describe the emotional connection she had with the memoir really helps get people to notice a lot more quickly than they might have otherwise. Over the last year, it seemed like Rita was flying everywhere promoting her book. She put together a web site, and has been busy giving talks all over the nation. And this month the paperback was released.

A strange thing happened early this Monday. I had signed up to help with organizing talks in our local office as part of the Authors@Google series at the urging of one employees who's been doing the bulk of the organizing for the Santa Monica office and wanted some help and input from others in the office. He'd gone to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books and met a number of authors he thought might be interested in coming to our office. When I went into our meeting, whose book was on the top of the stack but Rita's new paperback release of If the Creek Don't Rise!

I figured it was a wonderful coincidence and I knew I needed to invite Rita to speak at our office. I can't wait to see her talk and look forward to my colleagues getting to learn about her memoir too.

Convergence or Coincidence?

It's not often that my usually divergent interests move the opposite direction: toward convergence. This seemed to change, at least in a small way, yesterday, when Arizona State University announced that they are completely switching over their email communications infrastructure so it is hosted by Google. This is a relatively new area of growth for Google, and one I think is pretty cool, especially for schools and non-profits. Here's the info:

http://asu.edu/news/stories/200610/20061010_asugmail.htm

I've never been to ASU's campus, and I don't work on Google Apps for Your Domain, so why would I say these things are convergent? At first glance, I admit it is a bit of a stretch! But, it's not so far-fetched a connection when one considers how far-flung my interests have been over the past few years. I work for Imagining America, a consortium of higher-educational institutions. Arizona State University has been one of the earliest consortium members to join up. I've been very impressed with their commitment to public scholarship and community involvement for several years now.

The connection: I've worked with both ASU and Google. Not very strong connection, huh? Ok, I admit it's a tangential connection at best. That other part of my life, the working at Google part, doesn't involve public scholarship, and I don't think anyone at Google has ever heard of Imagining America. Consider this though: Google does want to use its philanthropy arm to do public good, and this makes me think that more substantive convergence might be possible! What a great potential avenue for philanthropy to take: offering non-profits basic applications like email, chat, calendar, and basic web-site hosting so that non-profits can work on the things they need to without having to worry so much about IT infrastructure. This could really revolutionize the way that non-profits work.