Mashable Monthly: The Courage to Care

Last night, I attended Mashable's Monthly event as a blogger to cover four demoing companies - Oosah, WeAre.US, Artiklz, and Strands. I've given a synopsis here. My apologies to those with screwy feeds, I must remind myself never to file something past midnight.

Weare.Us was the site that stood out for me as the best company to write an in-depth profile.

JOURNALISM AS A COMMUNITY SERVICE
There are finance columnists who love Rilke, business reporters who run marathons for cancer, and pundits who started their careers studying the economies of developing countries. In other words, for the most part, journalists don't suck. However, they get paid very little, receive more than a thousand releases per week, and have no job security. Essentially, they are quite often very cranky and articulate in making it known. To speak to people like this, the only way to break through the noise of other clamoring PR-types is to present something that is refreshingly sincere. After all, while news is certainly a fleeting medium for social commentary, one can hardly be faulted for attempting to lift up something honest. In this sense, the journalist becomes the noble gesturer. Weare.Us is the story that makes writers feel better about themselves.

Started as a way to bridge patient communities, Weare.Us is a network of individuals who share tips, give advice and connect over (usually long term) health issues. As someone who has had a cancer scare and worked for the Breast Cancer Fund, these communities make perfect sense. Nobody wants their FriendFeed hearing about the intricacies of cryogenic surgery or biopsies. Twitter simply isn't made for updates like "I woke up without eyebrows". Yelp doesn't have a section for people who can't taste anything anymore. And for God's sake, nobody wants their pseudo-acquaintances sending $1 Get Well balloons to them on Facebook.The technology of Weare.Us is hardly revolutionary in comparison to those heralded in the tech industry today. But what Weare.Us does have, is heart.

FEELING HUMAN: CONFESSING REAL INTENTIONS
After speaking to Weare.Us Product Manager Robert Patterson and Community Manager Stephen Doogan, I went upstairs to procure myself a hard-earned drink. Somewhere between the long line of thirsty attendees and the bar, I met a woman who identified as the wife of one of the Weare.Us founding team. We talked about how I used to work for a cancer charity, how I'd had health issues and how she too had experiences some health concerns during her pregnancy. It turns out that Weare.Us was actually created after she realized that there were very few places where she could speak to individuals like her with similar issues. While Robert and Stephen seemed like lovely men, it was this anonymous woman who inspired me to write this article.

Narrative needs to feel personal (even anecdotal). Whether for a journalist or the general public, the stories that are easy to retell are always the ones that are real and emotional. I want Weare.Us to succeed not because they are an amazing piece of technology, but because they are a bunch of regular people who have changed their lives to build something useful and altruistic.

William Butler Yates wrote, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." Weare.Us proves that in fact, the best (and often the underdogs) continue to strive for greatness. If Yeats were alive, I'd tell him to put that in his bleak Modernist snuff box and take a whiff.

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