Since about 1987 except for a few years when I was living in Durham but working in Raleigh I have been a member of the Downtown Durham Rotary Club. This club is over a hundred years old and Durham’s largest Rotary Club. For the last couple of years the program committee headed by Don Stanger has had some of the best programs that the club has ever had. (Don is also the current president of the Hope Valley Homeowners Association.) The program today was the final one in a series of five programs about media that Don organized with the help of Dr. Phillip Meyer of UNC’s journalism school.
The topic today was “new media” and the panel included two of Durham’s most prominent bloggers, Kevin Davis of Bull City Rising and Gary Kueber of Endangered Durham. Although the goal of these programs has been to share insights about the evolution of the media, because both Kevin and Gary blog about Durham the discussion ended up more enlightening in terms of Durham’s transformation. I highly recommend that anyone interested in civic life in Durham, take the time to use one of the free services like Google Reader to subscribe to these blogs. One of the interesting aspects of the program this afternoon was Professor Meyer’s attempt to elicit some indication from these panelists about how they might “monetize” their efforts or, in other words, make some money doing what they do. It’s pretty clear that neither has that in mind or even thinks it’s possible in the near term. They do what they do more out of service and passion for the community than any hopes of making a lot of money. My motives are not that pure.
When I started to blog here about the luxury home market in Durham early in the spring, I hoped that those that would see it would learn something about the market and consider letting me represent them when they buy or sell a home. But I’m drifting into the same camp with Kevin and Gary and would probably continue even if I won the lottery and didn’t have to earn a living. The first post on DurhamLuxRe back on March 7 was entitled The Fox and shared my impressions of Downtown Durham when I first moved here in October of 1984. It was a pretty desolate place. Almost 24 years later it is much, much different. But our image is still stuck somewhere in the 80’s with disco and bellbottoms. My small role in the effort to change this is to convince home sellers and their agents to sell the community and not just houses. It’s good for the community and good for the market but, most of all, it just makes sense from a marketing point of view. People don’t just search for houses, they search for a community and a lifestyle. When we do not challenge the prevailing view of Durham in other areas of the Triangle in the zillions of emails and other marketing pieces that we create, we shoot ourselves in our own collective foot.
My congratulations to Kevin and Gary on an interesting presentation at Rotary today but more so for the service these blogs provide sharing the great things about Durham and giving voice to grassroots efforts to continue to make it better and better.