Short Notice About A Sad Story And The Power Of Podcasting Community

UPDATE – new ChipIn Link.

I’m somewhat familiar with the work of Tee Morris, even though we’ve never really met. When Richard Saunders told me that the TANK Vodcast/Skeptic Zone vodcast would become primarily a podcast after Dragon*Con 2008, I knew that we were in for a lot of work.

My first response in such a situation is ‘get to researching it then!’. So, in order to learn more about a) podcasting (‘what have I got myself into?‘) and b) Dragon*con (ditto), I went and downloaded all the audio from the Podcasting Track from 2007, which is featured on the Dragon*Pod site.

You can’t miss Morris’ contributions to nearly every panel that was presented that year. Podcasting, social media, networking, getting books into the hands of readers via using online media… he was at the forefront and continually being name-checked by others.  The same was true for other years that I attended Dragon*Con, with people continually referencing his long-term efforts. Suffice to say, the best place I’ve found that indicates his dedication is found on his site, a post called ‘Perseverence and Peter Gabriel‘.

Philippa Ballantine, a New Zealand podcaster who I met briefly at the 2008 Dragon*Con writes of the situation that Tee Morris faces now:

Tee and Sonic Boom (his young daughter) are not only facing the loss of (his wife) Natalie, but also significant and immediate costs involved with her death and keeping their family together.
We’re all better off because of what Tee has done for the podcasting community. He started this thing, let’s show him in a little way, that we are standing behind him.

As you might have noticed by my ‘retweets’, many podcasters and keen listeners have been spreading the word; you should check out some of the great blogposts by the likes of Suppertime Sonnets and Scott Sigler (‘A Death in the Podcast Family‘) too:

Long-time Junkies and podcast fans probably know the name Tee Morris. In addition to being one of the first three fiction podcasters in the history of mankind, he is an author of fiction and non-fiction (most notably Podcasting for Dummies, the bible of podcasting that I recommend to everyone), he is a co-founder of Podiobooks.com and an absolute die-hard Krakens fan…

Tee’s wife Natalie passed away yesterday. Very shocking and unexpected. Tee now finds himself dealing with not only the tragedy of losing a spouse, but funeral expenses and the hard fact of being a single dad raising a seven-year-old daughter (known as “Sonic Boom”).

Now there’s an additional call-out after this great fundraising effort (and yes, feel free to chip in still – as Philippa just tweeted “can we break $10K in a mere 24 hours?”) -

Here’s the basic premise, podcasters, authors, people who make things donate to the fund and we auction them. DM me with any offers.

I’ll be sending something in on behalf of Token Skeptic / Skeptic Zone podcasts and I hope that even if you’re not familiar with the podcasting world, that you check out what the auction will be offering and know that it’ll help out someone who needs it.

Tagged as: blogging, Dragon*con, fundraising, help, links, news, Podcasting, skeptic zone, Skepticism, Tee Morris, twitter