Back from the Mother Earth News Fair. It was a huge, fantastic event. If Mother throws one of these anywhere near you, you might consider attending even if you have to travel quite a way. I was also fortunate enough to connect with several delightful “friends I’ve never met” and to enjoy my time with Dave and Ilene; this is the first time I’ve met them despite all my years of writing for BHM, and they are great people.
I’ll have tales (and tails!) from the fair later this week (and will also continue blogging “Middle-class shrugging”). But for your Monday morning perusal, I thought I’d point you toward one of the best discoveries from the weekend: Earthineer.
Earthineer was actually Dave’s find, but I hope he won’t mind me blogging it as he and the lovely Lenie travel home. Dave will have lots of his own fair impressions to blog, you can bet.
I passed the Earthineer booth several times, noting only the banner name and ASS-U-MEing it was a construction/engineering company (despite the dead giveaway of prominent computer monitors). Only after they bought multiple Backwoods Home subscriptions for Dave and Lenie to give to lucky folks who showed up at our booth wearing Earthineer tee shirts did I Get A Clue. Then I went over and talked with them.
“Yes, yes, Claire,” you’re saying. “But shut up and tell us what Earthineer actually is.” Well, Earthineer is a social networking site. It’s what Facebook could have been if Mark Zuckerberg had actually considered making Facebook useful and interesting. Except that it’s all for people who are involved in (or hoping to get involved in) sustainable farming and gardening and the rural life in general.
Earthineer is bright and well laid-out. Even though it’s new, still in beta, and some functions aren’t yet activated, it’s rich with information from people walking the walk. It’s a place to share practical knowledge and experience (it will soon also have a community questions & answers feature, which I think is going to be a huge asset).
Dan Adams, the young man whose concept it is, is a long-time Backwoods Home reader and software engineer. When the recession and India-outsourcing hit his job, he decided to use his skills, interests, and considerable supply of entrepreneurial enthusiasm on a project that couldn’t be outsourced away from him. His dad Don Adams (who was also in their fair booth and known by the handle GrumpyOldMan on the site) is also a long-time creative DIY guy. Together, they charmed me. And they gave life to a terrific and very promising site. I’m looking forward to watching it grow and I expect you’ll like it, too.
Hooray for Earthineer. Long may it flourish!
They sound interesting.
Too bad they don’t have a link to any terms of use or privacy policy.
Why should I trust them?
I don’t know, Martin. Ask ’em!
ADDED: My impression of Dan and Don Adams was that they were good people, definitely not in this to make Big Bux or exploit their members. I also had the impression that the site, while lovely, wasn’t quite ready for prime time yet; after all, it’s only in beta and anybody who’s signing up right now is beta testing and helping to work out the bugs.
Definitely they need a privacy policy and terms of use — and if users and potential users inform them of that, I’m pretty sure they’ll get on one quickly. Dan’s email address, which he seemed very happy to make public, is danieladams@earthineer.com.
Also, the email address support@earthineer.com is at the bottom of the main blogs page.
Hi folks! I’m back in Kentucky now. I think I’m still on pacific time, so I have my cup of coffee in hand. 😉
Martin – thanks for bringing it to my attention. I’ve been so busy building the site, I let this fall through the cracks. I’ll put together our privacy policy and terms of use, and once we have something concrete, I’ll post a link here as well.
For what it is worth, this is what you can expect: you retain the rights to all the content you upload, will do our utmost to insure the security of the information you give, and we won’t be re-selling any of your personal information. I have no intention of abusing the trust that members give us.
If you post a blog, you give Earthineer the right to display that information, and use the images (for the “featured blog” – we feature a new blog each week, based on recommendations. If your blog is featured, we’ll use one of the images for the “featured blog” link). If you deactivate your account (a feature we haven’t coded yet), the information will still reside in the database, but will be removed from view.
Any photos that are uploaded into albums are (currently) available for view when someone clicks on your profile, but we’ll be adding privacy settings to the photos so that you have the option of only having friends see them (it will default to “friends only”). We won’t use any of the photos, unless you explicitly give us permission.
Later down the road, we will use your zip code to serve advertisements (they are unobtrusive – no pop-ups or emails) from local sustainable businesses…but that’s it.
If you’re interested, I’d be happy to answer security questions through email as well.
Since I don’t have it written yet, I can’t outline everything that will go into the terms of use and privacy policy, but once we have everything written, I’ll link to it.
As Claire mentioned, this site is still in “beta” – I’m still fixing bugs and quirks and building in new features. I’d certainly welcome feedback and suggestions as we move forward.
Claire – thank you so much for the kind write-up. It was fantasic meeting everyone! It’s not surprising to me that I instantly felt a rapport with you folks. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone again in San Rafael in September.
Thanks, Dan. And welcome! I expected that you’d be responsive to requests for a privacy policy, but I didn’t anticipate your response being so quick or so personal. In your shoes, I’d be too exhausted right now even to think. It was great meeting you and your dad at the show. I wish you huge success.
I see that Rational Review News picked up this blog item this morning. I suspect after Mother’s fair, the word about you will be spreading happily.
Claire, I did ask them, via the support link.
Dan, Thanks for the quick email response (less than 24 hours).
What you outlined above looks good.
I’ll watch for the full policy.
Thanks Claire. It was great meeting you as well.
That’s fantastic that Rational Review picked it up as well. Judging by the numbers in the database, it does appear that the word is now out. Guess I should get back to programming it… 😉
Martin – Thanks, and I’ll let you know as soon as we have the full policy.