Hello Friends,
This is my mission statement wrapped in a philosophy. Keep with me for a moment while I try to explain.
The ideas for this website began over 7 years ago. Then in 2004, as my home state of Florida was hit by four hurricanes, I made the committment to serve "on call" with an agency of the U.S. Government to help it effectively communicate with the survivors of major disasters.
Today, retired after 12 years of active disaster recovery duty, as I work on it (once again), I came to the realization that this site will never be truly completed. (I already knew it would never be perfect.) So, here it is, just one more of those "works in progress". Just like we, as humans, all are.
Websites, as you know, reflect both the vision and dreams/imagination of both its owner and designer - in this case I am both. Right now you're experiencing a unique meshing of an evolving website communication philosophy.
I'm thinking a website needs to be more about making the most
of the strengths of the Internet to communicate on
a human-to-human level.
While my website demonstrates a tiny fraction of the potential for enhancing human communication, it does show the Internet's greatest strength - the capacity to carry around the globe vast amounts of information. Early on it was all words and pictures, then streaming audio, and now video streams designed for the Internet are captivating global audiences.
The primary obstacle is no longer the cost of bandwidth, or speed of internet connection where the message is being downloaded. The overwhelming obstacle is that all of this information must compete for its fair measure of consideration in the mind of the person who is right now sitting there - somewhere on this small planet of ours - looking into their smart phone's small screen. That person is you - pressed for time, but curious, wondering how this information ties in with their own needs, the needs of their family, their friends, the groups they belong to, or the needs of their business.
So, every moment of every hour we have unfathomable volumes of information flying across borders and time zones at a speeds that are faster than the speed of human thought. That human processing speed is one more of the obstacles an effective website must be designed around: our individual and very unique capacity to process information and ever shortening attention spans.
My point is this: With the tools for searching and identifying precise information today, if your website's first messages fail to connect on an effective human level, then your website fails to communicate - period.
A website designer needs to have knowledge of the many uniquely human aspects that can either enhance or impede computer-mediated communications. That leads to this summary of my mission:
I enjoy sharing ideas and sharing my vision and doing what I can to make our world a little better. I believe it's true. "what goes around, comes around".
So, what new opportunities does the future hold for us? Jimmy Buffett sings the only right answer that I know is true: "only time will tell".
No matter what the future holds, this website will be around for a while - as a "virtual showcase". Thanks for investing of your time to read this. I hope it serves as an objective introduction. To see what I am currently thinking about, check me out on Twitter.
Thomas E. Nocera B.S./M.A.
Clearwater, Florida
