Reach - Then Teach

Reach - Then Teach


Dear Hannah: Derrick Brown's Oral History (#YourStory) (Episode 2.05 The UBP Made Dollars AND Sense) (10m15sec)

July 20, 2025

In June 2023, The Computer History Museum (Mountain View, CA) published my oral history (https://bit.ly/CHMOH_DB_YT) for my contributions to the computing world as an Internet strategist for The Universal Black Pages (an Internet directory of African-related content), and as the founding director of KnowledgeBase’s Project CHIP (which refurbished and redistributed 1500+ computers to Georgia families and organizations). My oral history experience inspired a new project called #YourStory. #YourStory combines #StandupStorytelling with principles and best practices of oral history recording to document the thoughts and experiences of ordinary people who do extraordinary work. EPISODE 2.05 "TRANSCRIPT": ... 26m22sec ... What was your vision for making The UBP make dollars AND sense? I liked responding to site submitters like Ann Nesby of The Sounds of Blackness ... this built organic community ... people saw us as connectors of the disconnected (The Diaspora) 28m37sec ... 29m30sec I describe The UBP's site submission and review processes ... 30m35sec I loved Infoseek and learned to do advanced searches there ... 31m30sec we had 300 sites in late 1994 ... by 1998, we had 4000 reviewed sites and 3000 unreviewed submissions ... 32m36sec The Diaspora is well-represented on The Internet ... Cafe Los Negroes 33m20sec ... 33m43sec CMcI returns (whew!) ... we had around 30,000 unique visitors per month ... 34m47sec Frats page were the most popular ... hmmm (CMcI) ... 36m06sec Bowie State's Deltas want to connect with Tennessee State's Deltas 36m37sec ...