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in our effort to pass the grass roots knowledge on to our constituents, i often mention ybp guide to everyone i meet in an effort to not only help my fellow yo pros, but to also elicit some opinions of the blog. funny thing is, as soon as i mention blog, some of my friends turn up their proverbial nose and say ‘blog…wtf is a blog and why should i care?’

hmmm, let’s see here.

despite the awkwardness of the word ‘blog’ and its juxtaposition of the many web 2.0 terms that seem to mash two words together or leave out an important vowel (flickr, techcrunch, engadget, slashdot, newsforge), it has become the definition of today’s version of ‘what did you learn today?’ remember when you used to actually get up and ask someone a question? now, we email, better yet inter-office IM someone to get an answer. a blog is a published extension of this philosophy: don’t hoard the knowledge. share!!

blacks need more technology in their life. no, i’m not talking about buying the newest cell phone (read: blacks switch from sprint to cingular on release of the iphone) or crackberry or even going into debt getting that 52″ plasma. blackenterprise just published that engineering degrees have been stale for the last 10 years. how is this related? its no coincidence that we know what myspace, facebook, and google is…but how many of us know how to create one? do we really hate the math and sciences that much? my answer is that as we get more blacks, starting with the young black professional generation, into not only the use of tech, but the KNOWLEDGE of tech THROUGH tech, we will grow as a people exponentially. don’t believe me? why will the next president be decided on the web then?

Huey Freeman

the writers of ypbguide are your peers. all of us have graduated college, prestigious colleges at that. some of us even have two and three degrees! as i continue to encourage more contributors to the blog, the variety of opinions not only spark debate and friendly banter (read here and here), but it inspires. it creates outlets. we all need mentors. we also need to know we can turn to someone with a relationship question, tech question, life question, or see what others ‘like me’ are doing.

its not rocket science, but i wanted to let it be known.

thank you to all of our readers. we love y’all. huey would be proud.

p.s. ybpguide is undergoing a redesign via yours truly very soon. be on the lookout for that.