If we ever needed a greater example of social networking in the 21st century, then New Orleans would be the first place to look. After being destroyed being flooded on account of failed levies in the fallout of Hurricane Katrina, the “sixth-strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded and the third-strongest hurricane on record that made landfall in the United States,” New Orleans was in desperate need for aide and restructuring.

In an article by Network World, we learn about a non-profit organization called Think New Orleans where an underpaid programmer, Alan Gutierrez highlighted “how a crash course in social networking helped people emerge from the rubble; find their voice; fight the government; solicit help; and save their neighborhoods, schools and each other.” He explains that residents hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina used their creativity to use social media sites such as: Flickr, WordPress, Yahoo Groups, and Google Maps to increase rebuilding efforts “away from the wrecking balls swung by city government.”

“Citizens became our knowledge workers. We were able to collect experts and to use their viewpoint as a home owner to help do the job that the government was supposed to do. People reached out to these tools because they were compelled to,” Gutierrez says.

Gutierrez offered many Internet Workshops to show people how to use social networking to organize using the Internet as a platform. The collaboration and social networking took off after the creation of a “New Orleans wiki to draw up a rebuilding plan outline, which was collaboratively written and edited by residents.” The plan was to show the neighborhoods of New Orleans that had been under water so that city could receive federal aide to begin rebuilding. Yahoo Groups was used for information from residents.

“What we wanted was to have the city government create the recovery plan, have housing and urban development create the homes for people, to have the school districts clean the schools and reopen them, but we had to do it ourselves,” Guiterrez says.

I have to admit, I was unaware of the impact that mass collaboration had in New Orleans. Again, we see that social networking brings people together by a common interest were transparency of information is important for rebuilding. New Orleans has been devastated by Hurricane Katrina but it’s good see that Web 2.0 technologies have brought people together. The growing change we preach on this website is constantly helping people. I wonder if the floods in Iowa will generate the same response.