They are the moments that make time stand still; the moments so powerful they burn deeply into the hard-drives of our mind, so that months, years, even decades later we look back (sometimes in awe, sometimes in horror), and remember every detail vividly.

Two recent made-for-tv movies about the life of Matthew Shepard brought back such memories for me. Like most of us, I receive hundreds of e-mails each day, but one sticks out in my mind. I remember the conference I was at, and retreating to my hotel room in-between sessions. I remember staring into the old Toshiba laptop I had lugged with me and reading this e-mail. about this college student named Matthew I had never met.

I remember staring into the bathroom mirror, blotting my eyes with a cheap white hand towel, wondering how I would explain my appearance at the next meeting I was now five minutes late for.

And that's what made this life-changing moment even more remarkable for me. I experienced it alone. Outside of my hotel room, most people were completely unaware of what had happened, and I needed to connect with someone. I wanted to reach out and tell somebody everything was going to be all right, or have somebody tell me the same.

But nobody was huddled around television sets; no 24/7 news coverage. It wasn't like the day the Space Shuttle exploded, or the day the towers fell. In fact, for the first several days, virtually all of the information I received about Matthew's status in intensive care came from that Toshiba. I was surrounded by straight people at a conference. And the people who knew, who cared, who understood were out there in cyberspace. It was the first time I really understood what online community was all about, and why I needed it.

And the man that connected all of us in cyberspace is John Aravosis. Sure, there were many other folks including myself who created web page tributes to Matthew (mine is archived here). John, however, was really the one who brought us all together. A constant source of information, and perhaps most importantly, a place to talk.

TEMENOS: So John, where were you when you first heard the name Matthew Shepard, and what made you decide to create a website for him?

JOHN: I had just woken up Friday morning, got online to check the news, and read an Associated Press story about the attack. Something about the story struck me as worse than any other anti-gay attack I'd read, and I immediately forwarded it to a bunch of friends, including friends in the media. As the day went on, information was flying back and forth via email - story updates, statements from gay groups, etc. - and it was all so overwhelming, I asked one of the gay groups if they wanted to join me in creating a Web site (for free) to aggregate the information about the attack, and provide the community a one-stop shop, so to speak, where they could find out the latest about the story. The group wasn't interested. So, I asked a friend of mine to help me, he built the structure of the site in 3 hours, and I spend the entire weekend filling it with content so it was ready to launch on Sunday.

TEMENOS: Did you expect the kind of reaction you got from the site?

JOHN: No. I'd hoped people might find the site useful, but I never really thought it would become as popular as it did. I remember the first 24 hours got 50,000 hits (which at the time, was quite a lot - this was 1998 after all), but what really told me something was going on was Monday morning when I got a call from Matt's college. A dean there had seen the site and wanted to know if I would link to their special page containing updates about the story. This was less than a day after I'd launched the site. I was simply blown away.

TEMENOS: People originally logged on to get information, but the site evolved pretty quickly into an action-oriented on. As I recall, many of the local candlelight vigils organized to honor Matthew began by people posting messages on your board.

JOHN: Yes, that's right. I had decided to put up a bulletin board where people could express their anger and sadness, and suddenly people started us it, on their own, to organize vigils and protests. After a few days, there were so many messages from people working together on planning different responses, that I had to close the board off to "regular chat" and kept it exclusively for action-planning. What was fascinating is how I didn't really plan for the board to become an action tool, the online community took it upon itself. That's one of the things about the Internet I always tell my clients. You have to keep an open mind, and watch where your community wants you to take your online presence.

TEMENOS: As I mentioned, logging on to your site and seeing the way that community evolved, really impacted my concepts of online community and online activism and influenced a number of the sites I've created including www.youthresource.com and www.temenos.net. How did it affect you and the work you do online?

JOHN: As I mentioned above, it reinforced my conviction that an online community is only as good as the flexibility of the people running it. Meaning, you have to get feedback from the community itself, and be prepared to adapt your presence based on what that community wants to do online. I also thought the scrolling news feature on the main page worked quite well. A friend had suggested it. Basically, every time there was a new story, press release, or some other news about the issue, I posted it in the center column of the site, which then pushed the older story further down. This enabled people to scroll down and chronologically catch up on the news, but also to see how the story began and how it developed over time. We ended up using the same system for the StopDrLaura.com site, and it worked quite well.

TEMENOS: Do you think our national lesbian, gay, bi, trans, and intersex (LGBTI) groups are making the most of the internet? What role would you like them play?

JOHN: I don't think they are making the most of the Internet. I'd like to see them do a lot more with email, including doing regular email updates about their latest work and what's new on their issues. While most of the large groups have a community or members that follow what they do, I don't get the sense that that community is very well organized online for the largest groups.

TEMENOS: What does the internet hold in store for you? What new projects are you working on? JOHN: Well, right now I'm investigating, and doing a series of line articles about, the congressionally-created September 11 Victim Compensation Fund and its apparent decision to permit some gay and lesbian partners of those who died in the 9/11 tragedy to fall through the cracks, and not get the same compensation as heterosexual married spouses. I think that's absolutely atrocious that this Administration would take an issue like September 11 and start to pick and choose which of those heroes who died are more worthy than others, especially based on their sexual orientation. I'm also still running my e-publication, THE LIST, which is a weekly email update about the most important gay political issues of the week that I think everyone should know about, with some of my own commentary thrown in.

TEMENOS: And now that you've had quite some time to reflect on this experience, what would you want to say today to the thousands of people who logged on to your site?

JOHN: Wow. That's kind of hard, because the experience was so overwhelming for me as well. To some degree, I was simply doing a job - I wanted to do what I could to inform the world about this horrible crime, and the fact that the site created an entire community was a bit surprising, though quite welcome. I guess my overall message would be that anyone can do what I did with the Matthew Shepard site, or what my friends and I did by launching StopDrLaura.com. It simply takes a good idea, the willingness to devote some time, and passion. If you have all three, you can make a difference on whatever issue you care about. I think too often people think you need to be some kind of superman to do big things out there, and it's just not true. You simply need to care, and have the fire in your belly to stand up and challenge the bad guys. My one hope is that as a result of these online campaigns, more people realize that it's not that hard for them to make a difference, and more importantly, that even one person CAN make a difference.

TEMENOS: Thanks John.