Kevin Freitas, Inspiring a Community

I wanna first thank my professor, Andrew Fry, of the Institute of Technology, for being so indulged into the technology industry. Time and time again, he is able to pull from his vast network of relationships, industry related, and share them with us as guest speakers. This past Monday, our class was visited by the third guest speaker so far this quarter, Mr. Kevin Freitas, and while last, he was surely not least!

I have thoroughly enjoyed all of the speakers brought to our class and taken very valuable information away from each. But I have to share, I was most inspired by Kevin. Kevin is an established and successful computer scientist. He works for a company, Site Crafting, where his role is half programmer and half team manager. Kevin is also known to be one of the first, if not the first, blogger in this area. Kevin's personal web site, KevinFreitas.net, has a blog archive that goes back some 10 years! It is literally a documentary of his life, pictures and stories, the works. It's really quite fascinating. But, while that is cool, Kevin also has created a site, FeedTacoma.com, for the community of Tacoma, "for the people" he actually said :-), for which I have to make note he makes no profit off of. In all honesty, I found that last note remarkably insane, but also remarkably respectable and inspiring all at once.

The site, FeedTacoma.com, serves as a one stop shop to brows all blogs tagged Tacoma. Two unique properties of the site are one, it's ability to equalize all voices, and two, it's ability to self maintain. Because the links to the blogs tagged Tacoma are all displayed in the same manner, regardless of who they are from, my personal blog (should I choose to tag it Tacoma) would be linked up just as someone at the New Tribunes would. This enables everyone to network and get there voice out there. The site is also self maintaining. It runs on algorithms and requires no one person to continually maintain or upkeep it. Instead, Kevin chooses to revamp or add to the site whenever he pleases. Some recent and up in coming changes are a shopping area where local shops or people can post pictures and descriptions of items for sale on the site and transactions can actually be completed. Also, Kevin is recruiting volunteer artists to be a part of template making for blogs that users can start, should they choose to open an account on FeedTacoma.com.

Now, as I mentioned, Kevin is making no profit from this site and that is by his own personal choice. Certainly, this site has a tremendous potential to generate income as it gets many hits per day and requires very very little work to maintain. While the rest of us might not be able to see ourselves passing up money like that, it is truly refreshing and inspiring to see someone so down to earth and generous as Kevin. He chooses to not be greedy, but instead to be content, to give, share and grow in relationships because of it. Through this site, not only is the community of Tacoma more connected to each other, but Kevin himself has made many friendships through it.

With Tacoma being my hometown and a city that I adore, I am grateful that Kevin has made FeedTacoma.com for our community. Thanks Kevin!