About

Welcome to the Main Site Blog at Gulf Coast Rising (and temporary “About” page).  I am Margaret Saizan,  the founder and creator of Gulf Coast Rising – a social news, network and marketplace for the Gulf Coast Region. The site is still in Beta – well Apha really – and so I haven’t gotten around to some of the most basic and important tasks yet – like creating an about page to explain who I am and what the site is about, for example!   So in the meantime, for some background on me,  I am a change agent and social entrepreneur from Baton Rouge, Louisiana who has  lived and worked on the Third Coast all of my life – and so the Gulf Coast is both my home and my passion.  In spite of devastating hurricanes, oil spills and more recently floods,  I love living on the Gulf Coast – for me there  truly  is no place like home.

As  far as my background as as web publisher, i became very immersed in publishing content about the Gulf Coast during the hurricane season of 2005.  I started a blog about Hurricane Katrina (pre-landfall)  – Beyond Katrina, www.hurricane-katrina.org (url is currently forwarding here although I plan to move the original archived blog over here soon) and I continued to cover the recovery of Special K and other challenges inherent to the Gulf Coast until early 2008.  Beyond Katrina  went on to win The Society for New Communications  Research Award of Excellence in 2006)  and it  attracted a readership of over a million viewers from 350 countries worldwide.  Through that endeavor I helped the U.S. Department of State, Foreign Press Center  a foreign media tour of New Orleans during the  second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, I launched an adopt a family for Christmas program to match hurricane impacted families with benefactors, and the blog has been included in new communications research at a number of universities worldwide.

In addition to my passion for new media, I co-owner of a family business that provides services to the Gulf Coast merchant marine and oil and gas industry, I coach, consult and collaborate with Gulf Coast visionaries who are developing legacy projects, and I also represent Gulf Coast fine art photographer, Matthew D. White whose amazing work is focused on documenting the fragile beauty of endangered locales across the Gulf Coast Region.

The next evolution for me is Gulf Coast Rising- I have been planning this Gulf Coast portal for some time now – but  life seemed to always intervene.  I realized it was finally  time to get serious about it…so here we are.  For those of you who have been following the site  over the past month or so you will notice that features tend to  come and go and that will probably continue to happen for a while.   That’s  what beta is – it’s about  trying on things for size until you get it right. For example, I am in process of  extensively rework the newswires – for the moment I am going to be focused on getting the  newswires up for the fifteen largest statistical metropolitan areas on the Gulf Coast – so some of the newswires that are currently here  will be changing and dropping off the active  menu bar – but these will come back in another form. So thank you for your patience with the ongoing changes here. The web is indeed  an organic and forgiving medium.

That being said,  you  cannot know how much I value your readership and your participation here at Gulf Coast Rising.  The site is  ultimately about community and so I  want and wholeheartedly encourage my readers to be part of shaping the evolution of the site.  So please do  sign up and become a member – get involved with seeding  the social network, email me, leave comments, share content, start a conversation at the forum – just jump in.   I would love to hear from you and I have your back.  If you start a conversation on the forum,  for example,  I will jump in and help you get it going.

Over the course of the next few  weeks there are going to be a lot of  new interactive features rolling out that will  enable our readers to be part of the action here. Joining the site as a member  is one of the ways you can stay plugged in and membership is totally free. As we speak, I am working on getting a newsletter out to our current members – Once I get the member communications  infrastructure in place  I will be touching base on a regular basis about member benefits,  new features,  etc.  There is much to do here and so I appreciate your patience while I move in, unpack the boxes and settle in.

So that’s it for now. Until I get the contact form up feel free to contact me via gulfcoastrising@gmail.com. I look forward to hearing from you!

- Margaret Saizan -

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