One of the neat things about Ethan running the Center for Civic Media at MIT is that sometimes I get the opportunity to play with cool new technology before it's released to the public.

Today's the official launch day for FOLD, a really neat platform for contextualized storytelling. The platform launched with a handful of stories already on it, and one of them is mine -- How I Found Jewish Renewal, And Why I Stayed.

a glimpse of a tiny piece of my story, with context alongside

I've told parts of this story before, in a variety of places, but had never told the whole thing in quite this way. Here's what's cool about FOLD (for me): the narrative part of the story appears in a column, not entirely unlike the way it would appear on a blog like this one. But if you click on any of the hyperlinked words, a card appears beside the story offering context. The cards can contain text, video, you name it.

I love the way this platform encouraged me to think about my storytelling. I'm a writer by trade, so I tend to focus on words... and I know that even when I link to things in blog posts, most people don't click on those links. But FOLD makes it easy for me to show context right alongside the story itself, and that in turn allowed me to tell this story in a beautiful new way.

If you're interested in learning more about FOLD, here's Ethan's post about it -- it was created by his masters' students -- and, of course, you can sign up and give it a whirl yourself.

And I hope you'll click over and read my piece there. There's a lovely synchronicity for me in the timing of this launch. Yesterday David and I officially became co-chairs of ALEPH, and today FOLD launched with my story about how David helped me to find Jewish Renewal, and what I've found here, and why Jewish Renewal matters so much to me.

Go and read: How I Found Jewish Renewal, And Why I Stayed. If you wind up signing up for FOLD and writing something there, drop me a link! I'm looking forward to seeing how others use this unique platform for storytelling and context curation.