NAICA—the remnants of a wonderful online world

I received an email from my good friend about a website we were involved with, NAICA online (NAICA), which is an acronym for Native American Indigenous Cinema and Arts. Apparently someone is interested in replicating the content and idea behind this wonderfully constructed and conceptually based online site.

The sad part of this situation is the particular individual interested in practically duplicating what once was done, and completely funded by those involved is an educated person teaching at the university level, but seemingly incapable of conceptualizing a blog style site centered on Indigenous Arts.

Now, we never received funding of any kind in constructing the site, although, we as a group—and almost a complete non-profit entity—did receive discounts at film festivals so we could provide our unique brand of coverage. My friend wasn't happy that someone would contact them and ask for assistance when they were going to replicate the site in a university classroom environment, and I told them they have every right to be unhappy.

What irritates me, as probably does my friend, is they asked for our contact list of individuals that we worked tirelessly obtaining through creating trusting relationships over time, enduring various film festivals to meet and request interviews from individuals, cold calling and emailing people regarding their work. It's rather aggravatingly apparent this individual has no comprehension of what it takes to utilize web-based technology, let alone create a blog where one would interview an individual to utilize the content online.

Why do some people jump in before testing the waters? You might suggest that they are contacting my friend for assistance, so actually they are testing the waters. Au contraire. Assistance is one thing when you are coding html and cannot figure out how to center a "div" tag once you've coded the CSS. But it's an entirely different creature when you ask of an organization, that faded out way before its time, to provide their coveted contact list so you can virtually duplicate what we had to stop doing because we had to earn a living and time was too precious and too little for us to forge ahead.

What is obvious is that someone wants to recreate what we have already done—the majority of which my friend lost countless hours of sleep, time and money over. Sure that's flattering, but it's also insulting to contact the founder to request information that was entrusted to our organization, as well as, for the most part, ask how we did it—that shows lack of effort and capability on the part of the individual and it makes me question how they got to the university level to teach.