Announcing /Edgewards

Despite all the recent discussion about failing blog networks and the resulting handwringing about the presumably negative climate for blogging, I am moving to launch a new project that I have been working on in the background for a few months. /Edgewards is a new media collective that I am heading up, one that will involve a variety of new blogs launching here at www.stoweboyd.com, as well as growing number of affiliated blogs hosted elsewhere.

The premise behind /Edgewards is straightforward: to foster thought, writing, commentary, and conversation about topics that truly matter -- topics that may be underrepresented in the great social media explosion -- and bringing forward deeply committed contributors, leaders in their fields of interest,

In the past few weeks, I have been joined at /Message by some new voices:

• Matt Balara is a designer based in Hamburg, but soon moving to Australia.
  
• David Cushman has spent the last 20 years banging around in media, and speaks with a British accent.
  
• Sandy Kemsley has a deep background in enterprise software, and watching where the web is taking us.
  

A few weeks ago, I launched /Ground, a new blog dedicated to localism in all its possible meanings: local food, transit, politics, governance, production, economics, and distribution. I am lucky to have been joined by some truly cool contributors, all located in San Franscisco:

• Rachel Weidinger is a massive foodie and local communities fanatic.
  
• Hillary Hartley is a leading advocate of Government 2.0.
  

And today I am announcing the launch of /Mind, a blog devoted to cognitive science and the universals of human cognition. I have been joined in my work here by a new friend:

• Brynn Evans is a doctoral candidate in cognititive science at the University of California at San Diego, although she's been spending a lot of time in San Francisco recently.

I will be continuing to write at /Ambivalence, which is basically just a grab bag of web scraps with the byline 'no tech, only flesh.' /Ambivalence also provides me the opportunity to fool with Tumblr, while all the blogs here at stoweboyd.com are hosted by Typepad.

In the upcoming weeks and months, I will be adding new blogs here -- like one devoted to the New Nomad lifestyle -- and also affiliating with some of the great bloggers who have existing blogs. My good friend, Jamais Cascio, who blogs at Open The Future, is the first of this larger federation of blogs under the /Edgewards banner. In the next several weeks, he will be joined by others... and I will provide them an actual badge to put on their sites, as well.

Note in the sidebar of /Message there is a new /Edgewards collection of recent posts and feeds. There is also a consolidated feed for all posts with the /Edgewards federation. On my return from vacation I plan to launch an /Edgewards blog, that will include announcements about the federation, and discussion about the direction we are heading in.