What Is Project 2996 Doing for the 13th Annivesary?

Legacy: What Project 2996 Is Doing for the 13th Anniversary of September 11th from Darryl Heron

For the 13^th Anniversary, we have a three-pronged approach planned. First and foremost, we have our core desire to make sure that every single victim is remembered via an online tribute that is accessible for the world to read. Secondly, our Group Pinboard at Pinterest continues is its quest to have a “pin” for all of the victims. Lastly, we have a new project, which I’ll tell you about shortly.

The more time passes, the more other things and life crowd out the memory that we have of the victims and their families. This is only natural, but it is a force that is working against us and we need to be aware of. I don’t believe that any of us want to see the victims and their families relegated to some 30 second spot in news outlets everywhere, buried behind some news filler that nobody cares about anyways. We want to make something positive out of that terribly tragic day.

I was talking to my wife about wedding anniversaries and I got to thinking that we (as a society) tend to remember the first ten or twelve anniversaries of events (wedding anniversaries, high school reunions, etc.) but after that then we tend make a celebration less and less frequently, going to increments of five (or farther away). Again this is a natural tendency of people in general.

I was working on putting up some pins for the Project 2996 Group Pinboard and I realized that a lot has been done to preserve the memory of the various victims and to turn the tragic event into something that will help people while keeping the victims memories alive. I also read “Just a Few Sleeps Away”, by Mike Nichols who tells the story of a family of one of the victims and how they dealt with their loss. This got me thinking about legacy and how there is so much out there for so many of the victims. I thought that it would be great to do another group pinboard focusing on what has been done to keep the memory alive of the victims via scholarships, foundations, charities, buildings, parks, streets, schools, anything has been dedicated to the victims and anything that keeps their memory alive. The focus of this group pinboard will be on the legacy of the victims.

Dale and I have learned a few lessons from our involvement in Project 2996 that I wanted to apply to the 13^th Anniversary. The biggest is that while we want to see every victim represented by the anniversary, we realize that this not at all achievable, but Project 2996 can use the anniversary to capture peoples’ interest in September Eleventh. I recently scheduled some time to put a lot of pins in the group pinboard and if we can all take some names and a lot a certain amount to time weekly (or daily), we can make great strides towards honoring the victims via our various campaigns. Let us use the days leading up to the anniversary and the entire year to honor the victims via our three-pronged approach.

I can’t speak for you, but I know that I’m fascinated by numbers and I’m sure that I’m not alone on this. The number 13 has a bad reputation. While we all know that given the nature of what happened on September 11th, that we can’t rally change it, but lets put some Legacy into this year’s commemorations. All of the victims have left some kind of Legacy, let us see if we can’t find it and let the world know!  I hope that you’ll all join me in pinning at the all new Project 2996 Legacy Group Pinboard and in promoting it. Let’s have fun with the “Lucky 13” and honor the memory of the victims!.

Darryl Heron

The Twelth Anniversary Is Fast Appoaching

We’ve seen a few comments here and there and a few emails asking if Project 2996 is honoring the victims of September 11th this year.  To this the answer is definitely YES!  While I can’t speak for Dale’s activities this past year, my life has taken quite a few twists and turns and I have not had the time that I would like to have put into this very honorable cause.  I don’t wish to bore you with the details of this past year (plus I know that the explanation would be way to long and rambling).  Here are a just a few things from me.

Please keep the tributes coming.  A lot of work goes into keeping track of which victims have profiles and which ones don’t.  Unfortunately, we’re not aware of a simple, quick, and low effort way to keep everything up to date, but we’re working on it. Be creative in the tributes that you do. Let us know if you want to create a tribute but don’t have a blog or website and we’ll see about finding a place for your tribute.

The Project 2996 group pinboard on Pinterest continues.  Think about how amazing it will be to have pictures and tributes to all of the victims in  one location online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  We managed to get quite a few pictures up over the past year, but we’re not there yet.  If you’re not able or don’t wish to pin in this group, why not tell others about it.  There are nearly 1,200 followers of the board and 2o+ contributors. It sure would be great to work some Pinterest magic and spread the word throughout your Social Media circles.

Finally, lets start thinking about the anniversary next year.  Lets do something big for the ‘lucky 13’.  Let us know what kind of crazy ideas you have and we’ll start working to make memorable.  Bye for now.

Darryl

 

The Pinterest Group Board Continues

I just wanted to give everyone an update on the Project 2996 Printerest Group Board Campaign and that the campaign continues.  I’d also like to thank those of you that participated and encourage you to continue and help us to reach our campaign goal of at least one pin for each victim and our overal organizational goal of at least onea “real” tribute by a “real” person for all of the victims.

Here are some basic statistics:

     Total pins in the Project 2996 Group Board: 349*

     Followers: 526

     Members of the group board: 17 (besides myself)

Pinterest is still relatively new compared to some of the other social sites out there so tools are still being developed that can give us more analytical information, so it is hard to pull a lot more information without a lot of manual effort.  I can say that I noticed that some people have created their own Project 2996 boards or September 11th boards and repinned some of our pins there.  One other thing that I’m aware of is that the 3 presenations that I put together for this campaign have all had more than 4000 views, which is many times more than any of my other presentations on SlideShare!

I’d like to thank the following people who have created pins at the board:

Trish Nonaka, Traci Wilson, Cathy Parsons Schimdt, Lorraine Wronski, Christina-Marie Wright, Diane Sherlock, Mrs. Who

Bärbel Wallon, John Bowden, Dale Roe, Kelly JW

My apologies if any of the names I used are not your preferred name, but these are the names listed in Pinterest.  I also apologize if I left any of the pinner out who created any pins on our board.   I’d also like to single a few other people out for their effort and impressions that they left on me.  John Bowden was the first person (after Dale of course) who participated, and this really motivated me to keep this campaign going.  Bärbel Wallon is a German friend of mine and previously had no ties to Project 2996 and her involvement really touched me.  Cathy Parsons Schimdt asked for names multiple times after pinning people that she did tributes for and she encouraged my to continue the campaign by asking for more names to pin the near future, so thank you Cathy!

Looking at the campaign there are obviously some things that could have been done differently but it is always exciting to see when a campaign goes from an idea to reality and when people come on board and the campaign gets moving.  We can be proud of what we have accomplished so far but why stop here?  We can certianly reach the campaign goal of having at least one pin for each and every September 11th victim and we can certainly do this by the 12th Anniversary.  During the campaign the Facebook group grew from 400 to 462 people, so if every person in the facebook group were to create a pin for the tributes that they have already created, and do 5-10 more pins for victims without active tributes, we could easily reach the campaign goal of a pin for all of the victims.   It would also be great if you would mention Project 2996 and the campaign to your family, friends, and colleagues, and in the various social media circle.  I would love to see the size of the group grow, because this generates traffic and word of mouth buzz that helps campaigns to grow.  When you join Pinterest, please be sure to let us know your Pinterest user name and provide us a link to because there are often multiple people with similar names, so a link would look something like this (https://pinterest.com/darrylheron/ )

I have some other ideas for keeping Project 2996 alive and growing, but I’ll talk about them at another time.  I’d also be interested in hearing your ideas.  I’d like to give a big thank you to everyone that had participated and hope that you’ll all help us to mark the 11th Anniversary by creating pins for all of the victims and let’s not forget that we still have arround 1300 victims in need of tributes.  Thank you.

Darryl

Little Victories

We’re entering into the final stretch and it is only a matter of hours until we’re at the 11th Anniversary.  I thought that I’d take a little time to tell you where we are and share some of my thoughts.

At the moment there are 7 people that have joined the Project 2996 group board @ Pinterest and we have over 300 pins!  Some people have taken the challange and pinned 10 or more or have created pins for all of the people that they have created tributes.  Of those 300+ pins there are a couple of repetitons and a few that aren’t pins of the victims, but we have more than 10% of the victims represented by pins! The board is being followed by more than 460 people. These are all little victories and I’m indeed proud of everyone that has participated and will still participate!

The big goal that I had when I started this project was that we would have a pin for all of the victims and as a secondary goal I wanted to see that there was a tribute for every victims (as has always been a goal of Project 2996)!  We haven’t reached either of these goals yet but as time is running out I say let’s go out with a bang!  Let’s see how much we can do in the remaining hours! If you’ve been sitting on the sidelines, jump in, the water isn’t that cold!

For some other Little Victories, we can still do a lot of things. Let’s see what we can do of the following small goals:

• 1000+ followers of the group board
• 100 repins of our pins into other people’s own boards
• 100 comments on the pins in our board
• 100 members of the board
• 100 likes of the board
• 100 likes of the pins
• 1000 likes of Project 2996 in Facebook

I’m looking forward to see what we’re going to accomplish before tomorrow is over.  Tell you family, friends, and people you meet about Project 2996.  Commit to creating 10 pins for victims without pins (more tributes would be great as well). Let’s make the 11th Anniversary something special.

Darryl

Project 2996 group board

Pinned List

Tribute List

P.s. I’ve spent a lot of hours over the pat weekend putting together a list of victims that have been pinned and those that still need to be pinned.  The list started out as a copy of the Tribute list and I went through adding links to the victims where there is a pin.  I managed to get things in somewhat of an order for all of the flights and the Pentagon, but World Trade Center is still chaotic.  Getting the list together is very manually intensive. I can say that everyone that has a pin (at the time of my last update) has been noted, the alphabetical order is not always obvious and especially in the World Trade Center lists, some people are listed contained in the wrong list.  The best thing to do is to use Control F to search for names.

Pinterest Progress So Far

Glipse of Project 2996 Group Board on Pinterest

Hello everyone!  I just thought that I’d give you a quick update.  Above is a screencapture of part of the Pinterest Group Board. Dale has created ‘pins’ for all of the people he did tributes for, I’ve pinned all of the people that I did tributes for and then I’ve made a pass through the victims at the Pentagon and am about to start with the victims of the different flights.  Does anyone want to create some pins for any of World Trade Center victims or any of the victims of any of the flights?  Let us know your Pinterest user name and we’ll invite you to the group board. Below you can see a couple of recent pins.

Pin of Pentagon victim Teresa Martin

Pin of Pentagon victim Sgt. Tamara Thurman

We have a few members in the group board but it would be great to hit a significant number like 100 or even if everyone that has liked us on Facebook. You can ‘Repin’ pins that are already in the board into boards of your own as well as liking and commenting on them too. Be sure to check out the group board on Pinterest. Don’t forget that we still need more than 1200 tributes.

Calling All Teachers…

Calling All Teachers

Having known some teachers in my life, I know that many of them are constantly on the look out for things that they can add to their lesson plans to keep their students interested in their class and to get their point accross in new and exciting ways. You might be aware the the 11th Anniversary of September 11 is coming soon. I have a few ideas of how you can incorporate this event into your class. There are a couple of campaigns being done at Project 2996, a non-partisan group dedicated to preserving the memory of the September 11th victims, that I’d like to tell you about. And, I’d like to tell you how you might be able to incorporate them into your lesson plans.

You’re probably wondering what Project 2996 is?. Project 2996 started out as a way to honor the victims of September 11th. Project 2996 wanted to see that an online tibute is posted for every victim of September 11th. One done by a real person, that honored the way that the victims lived and not the way that they died. We all know more that we care to about the hijackers and a host of other peole that have done bad things to our society and aren’t worthy of using the space they do in our brain cells that they do. After updating the list of tributes after last year, we currently need around 1,300 more tibutes.

Here is a presentaton explaining what Project 2996 is.

What is project 2996? from Darryl Heron

To help celebrate the 11th Anniversary, we decided that we’d like to create a Project 2996 group board on Pinterest. The goal of our most recent campaign is to have a pin for each victim with a picture. The description around the pin would tell a little bit about the victim, will link to Project 2996 tributes, or will make it clear where we don’t have a tribute yet. These pins will also give people to a chance leave a comment afterwards. If people have a personal story about the victim that they’d like to share, there is some space to do this. Also, since pins are very visual this really helps people to realize that these were real people and not just some statistic being batted around.

How can I use this in my lesson plans. Imagine finding a victim (or more depending upon your time bandwidth), learning more about them and writing a tribute of your own. You can then create a pin in the Project 2996 group board on Pinterest and link to your pin. You can also create some pins where other people have done tributes, or where no tirbute has been done. The tributes and Pinterest group board provide different opportuinites and some people might prefer one to the other or want to do them with equal interest. Now, imagine the opportunities that this might give to your class. Your students can research one of the victims and find out about their lives. They can also see how Pinterest works and can be used for group projects. One thing is for sure, the experience will leave you different than it found you and you won’t look at September 11th the same.

Every victim has their own story, they had parents, siblings, spouses, boyfriends/girlfriends, kids, friends, and colleagues. They led a life and they left a mark on the world. We hope that you’ll help us to discover this and share it with the world. We hope that you’ll join us in one or both of the campaigns at Project 2996.

Here some links to information that can help you get started…

• What Is Project 2996 Doing for the 11th Anniversary?
• We Remember (aka the List)
• Contact Me (you can leave a message on our website about who you want to write a tribute for or that you want to participate in the Pinterest group)
• Project 2996 group board on Pinterest
• Our Facebook Page (you can also let us a message here as well)

What Is Project 2996 Doing For the 11th Anniversary?

Hello everyone! The Eleventh Anniversary of September 11th will be upon us shortly and I thought that we had to something special, because this will be the 11th of 9/11 and all. I got in contact with Dale and he was all for it so without further adieau let me tell you about it.

By now you might have heard about Pinterest. It is one of the newest crazes on the web right now. Pinterest allows you to create virtual online pinboards, where you organize pictures and web links. It is a very visual thing and people are loving it. Given the visual nature I thought why don’t we create a board for Project 2996 where we create a pin for each and every victim. Having a pin for every victim would put a face to all of the victims and this already removes some of clinical nature of people becoming statistics. Saying that nearly 3000 people died might be sad but you get a whole different perspective when you see pictures of everyone.

Here is an announcement presentation that I have posted to SlideShare that gives a high level view on this campaign.

By creating a group board this means that we can involve everyone that would like to participate, it also will help in being able to get all of the pins created before September 11th!

Here is a more in depth presentation that I put together to show you what needs to be done and it gives a little bit of instruction on how to use Pinterest for those of you who aren’t familar with it.

How many people will participate is hard to say, maybe we can set a goal of getting 300 people pinning in the Project 2996 board, this would mean that everyone would create around 10 pins each and it is less than the number of people that have liked us in Facebook. Another thing that would be great is if you have done a tribute, that you create a pin for every person that you’ve done a tribute for. Also, looking at the website and seeing how many victims have tributes there are around 1,300 people that are without tibutes now (this is largely due to deadlinks that Dale has removed after his last clean up of the list). It would be great if we can still get tributes for those victims without a tribute by September 11th.

If you’d like to participate in the Project 2996 group board on Pinterest, please leave a comment on the “Contact Me” page on the website, on our Facebook page, or in the board on Pinterest. After you’ve contacted us and we have a chance to guage the number of people that want to participate, we’ll determine how we’ll divide up the victims for pinning. I’d like to see at least one pin for every victim. It would also be great if each pin would then have at least one tribute that could be linked to it as well. I’m looking forward to seeing this campaign take on a life of its own. Be sure to spread the word. Happy pinning!

Darryl Heron