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Purpose:
This web site services Boston area residents and visitors to Boston.
We create and publish family friendly info about a broad range of topics of interest to African Americans and the Greater Boston Community. Our audience is about evenly split between individuals and those affiliated with companies or institutions. This has been observed by looking at who uses our site feedback forms and who dials in with request by telephone.
Consider AboutBlackBoston.com for your marketing and publicity driven projects and events. We have a history of working with clients in education, event promotion, startup firms, law and real estate.
Audience members range in age from 18-something to 65+. Teens aged 13-17 visit in small numbers, but we know youth peer leaders are a part of our audience demographic.
Site sections include Boston area African American calendars of cultural events and links to university, commercial, community based and arts and cultural events in Greater Boston.
You can obtain current K-12 school profiles, job openings, and business contacts. View videos. Hear audio podcast. We do want you to find what you are looking for and get help when you need it so please click Talk2Us if you don't see what you are looking for online or call 617.417.7456 to leave a message.
Scope:
We believe we compliment existing sites with Boston Black, multicultural and African American content and we will send our visitors to those sites as we find their URLs. We hope we leave no stone unturned in helping visitors and tourists discover Black Boston. 400,000 African Americans visit Massachusetts each year.
2004-2007 Visibility Online
Google ranked site #1
for "black boston" keyword phrase.
Yahoo ranks site #2
for "black boston politics" searches.
Bio
A "Best of Boston Magazine" award winner in an IT-marketing category (1993), and contributor to the NAACP's Crisis Magazine first article on "Blacks and the Super Information Highway" (1994), the publisher has years of experience building national web portals about African American Culture and community.
In 1994, the project "GO AFRO" was created for American Visions Magazine and launched on AOL/CompuServe services. Go Afro obtained 35,000 regular monthly subscribers; offered online live chat and interviews with celebrities and co sponsored offline networking events in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles with subscribers to the system.
I met Sadiki Kamboon, Director of the Black Community Information Center on Blue Hill Avenue in '81. He gave me the opportunity to teach a computer course. I titled it "How to Fix Your Own Computer Without Spending Several Thousand Dollars." He was my first connection to Boston's Black community, having arrived recently from the south.
One outcome of that experience landed a contract at the Region I office of the Department of Transportation. Another was the launch of a FIDO net style BBS, driven by PCBOARD software, and it was named SpiritDatatree - a PRE-INTERNET online network where people could connect for free to thousands online in black communities across the United States. SpiritDatatree was part of AFRONET - the first black owned and operated online communications service. This is SpiritDatatree.
About Black Boston History
Africans came to Boston in 1638.
How I got hooked up
In 1982, I sent an email letter with my dad ( a New York mail carrier). The Post Office was pushing for anyone with a modem ( mine was 300bps) to send letters by dial-up modem. He was looking over my shoulder. I showed him my new Osborne I, the world's first portable computer, which I had purchased in 1982.
The O-1 is right here by my side now. I'll show you a picture of it one day. The O-1 is old and a memory of my first foray into personal computing. And, I'll never forget what dad thought about it. Perhaps, that was the very first personal computer he had ever seen at that time?
I bought the O-1 in Watertown, MA. Brought it home and felt so alone. Had troubles with its Supercalc spreadsheet and Wordstar word-processing application. I struggled with the Z80 operating system command code that made it work, so I joined the Boston Computer Society for help. Bill Gates and Apple lectured often at group meet-ups at the John Hancock Hall. If you know MACWORLD Boston, you'll remember "LISA."
About that time, an African from Kenya took me to a Radio Shack store in Lawerence, Massachusetts. We were in training with WANG LABS, '81. He showed off his programming skills on a TRS-80 computer at Radio Shack. I was amazed! I used what I had learned to help Mel King's campaign for Mayor of Boston, shortly after. The African told me "you Americans have everything here. Some days I wake up and there is no toilet paper in my country! We fix our Wangs with anything we can pull together. I know how to fix them though--I can make a chip out of sand, turn it to silicon and make it work, HA!"
Toni Setorji struck my nerve.
Later my dad told me before he passed in '91 - "computers can be a good thing, a good career. See what you can do with it." I told him I would. When I helped build the GO AFRO online community on CompuServe/AOL for American Visions magazine, I thought about what the African said. Computers ARE numerical computing machines. I think Dad knew it was more to it than that.
- the digitalplumbersm
Accomplishments
It's nice to see an idea become reality. Here is what some visitors to our site have written.
Examples:
Hello, I am relocating to the area soon. Where do I meet Black people in Boston?"
see my Black Cyber-Space Journals ..if you wish
"I will be in Boston to produce a film and will bring 27 employees and cast. We will need accommodations, food, transportation service, any anything else you recommend. We want to get to know about your Black community before we come."
"I'm getting married in Boston and need services. Help me find black businesses who can help me"
"Hello, the Black Students Association of Wellesley College is hosting a fashion show soon. We need more contacts. Who do you know that designs clothes and lingerie that would be interested in showcasing their fashion at our show?"
Networking Matters
In Massachusetts, 65% of all minority-owned businesses are in Boston. inquire!
Contact us for more information
Write to: About Black Boston P O Box 701 Jamaica Plain, MA. 02130.
Contact 617.417.7456.
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