Pagan Power Social

PAGAN POWER TECHNOLOGY 1 Running head: PAGAN POWER TECHNOLOGY

How Pagan Power utilizes Technology. David "Toby" Meyers NTC/360 - Network and Telecommunications Concepts University of Phoenix September 8, 2009

PAGAN POWER TECHNOLOGY 2 Pagan Power Technology The first Pagan Social Network was devised in late February 2003 (Yahoo Groups, 2009). Its precursor the first internet founded Pagan Religious organization was brought to life in HTML, October 30th 1993. Before there were any social networks that relied on the internet, free servers and blogging websites. WitchVox and even MySpace used some of the ideas that came out of Pagan Power Social so much so, that I was actually called to work for MySpace. The writer of this essay David “Toby Nixon” Meyers is the founder, creator and programmer of Toby’s Pagan Power, Church of Pagan Power, Pagan Power Social, Pagans for Gay Marriage, Pagans on the Outside, Cannabis Pagans and Homeless Pagans all non-profit and organized and utilized for free using simple HTML and free web space. This essay is about how we did all of this and never paid a single dime to unite the first Pagan Social Internet Networking group.

Church of Pagan Power. From October 30 1993 until May 2005, the Church of Pagan Power existed between three different free web hosting internet services, (GeoCities, 2009; Angel Fire, 2009; Tripod 2009). From any computer connected to the internet in the world that had public access, including public and private libraries across the country and Canada, to log on remotely, update, and program HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) web pages that helped connect people of faith to each other. We helped test some of the first Java Chat rooms used to communicate over the internet. The Church of Pagan Power, decided that bulletin boards were best because, as is known, if you log out or log in to a Java based chat room you lose any messages before you log in and do not have access to messages after you log out. Church of Pagan Power utilized DHTML

PAGAN POWER TECHNOLOGY 3 (Dynamic Hyper Text Markup Language) I frames (Invisible Frames) and Java-Script pull-down menus to create one screen viewing of over two thousand five hundred pages of essays on Paganism and it’s interaction with the government and the public. It included an email based instead of server form for becoming a member and it lasted more than 10 years. After 32 clergy members, a broad membership world wide of almost three hundred we considered ourselves a success.

Pagan Power Social One day while we was trying to understand why a few people did not want to join Church of Pagan Power. Someone messaged, “what if people don’t want to join some sort of religious order with rules, but they still want to join this broadening Pagan community where can they find groups like this without rules or orders” (Personal communication, 2002). The importance of the website was that people connected and united; in effect Pagan Community. Somewhere between it being a bona fied pagan religious organization (IRS, 2009) and having to have a strict religious creed, not all pagans could or would join. Pagan Power Social was implemented using Yahoo Groups (Yahoo, 2009) and was under the so-called umbrella of Church of Pagan Power. Well if the problem is that not all pagans could join and it was not very flexible in terms of what it could do in the law. A new organization formed as a way to create broader Pagan community. This organization was Pagan Power Social; its first incarnation was Las Vegas Pagan Power Social (Yahoo, 2009), which spread to more than 20 groups in the United States, Canada and Mexico, which started a trend in Pagan Social groups on the internet, as several hundred thousand now exist.

PAGAN POWER TECHNOLOGY 4 Conclusion Using nothing more complicated than a bulletin board a chat room and the power of social networking, we helped start a worldwide revival of Paganism and community using nothing but free public access computers and burgeoning information technology. Potlucks happen every day of the week somewhere now; there are many Pagan Pride Celebrations in almost every city in America. This is how Pagan Power utilized information systems; this was how we changed the world, a little, at least for pagans.

PAGAN POWER TECHNOLOGY 5 References Angelfire (2009). Web Hosting. Retrieved August 21, 2009, from Angelfire: http://www.angelfire.lycos.com. Anonymous (2002) Personal Communication. Yahoo Groups (2009). Las Vegas Pagan Power Social. Retrieved August 21, 2009, from Yahoo: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Las_Vegas_Pagan_Power_Social. GeoCites (2009). Web Hosting. Retrieved August 21, 2009, from Yahoo: http://geocities.yahoo.com. Tripod (2009). Web Hosting. Retrieved August 21, 2009, from Lycos: http://www.tripod.lycos.com. IRS (2009). Exemption Requirements. Retrieved August 21, 2009, from IRS: http://www.irs.gov/charities/charitable/article/0,,id=96099,00.html.