In 2002 I conceived World Heritage Web, as "an online field guide to the world's most extraordinary places," created a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation and built prototypes to sell the idea to institutional sponsors -- UNESCO itself and universities. Two things happened: I lacked the connections to pitch the idea in settings which might be fruitful, and I hit major stumbling blocks in designing the underlying data model and computing architecture for the encylopedic breadth I was after.

Ten years later,

• World Heritage Web has been reimagined as a more scholarly project -- Cultural Heritage Web
• I've earned a PhD in Geography sorting out the data modeling issues
• The quest for institutional sponsorships and international partnerships will resume, as soon as a new prototype is built (coming soon, 2012)