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West Wight Potter Mailing List maintainer
dfarrell@ridgecrest.ca.us
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Following is a note from Geoff about the PY newsletter, and my off-the-cuff
responses. Anyone else have some thoughts about this?
Harry
>Harry,
>
>I'm not voluteering, I just simply do not have the time, but I might be able
>to help once in a while to do a single newsletter. That might be an answer
>for the future. I'm sure a lot of working folks just do not have the
>additional time to work on the newsletter. Perhaps there can be six or more
>individuals who could help just a time or two. Maybe it could be a committee
>with a chairman. Each individual volunteering for a month would send his or
>her newsletter to the committee chairperson for final editing and
>proofreading before being published.
I'll have to think about that. I'm not sure how that would work out. The
most time consuming part of the task is probably the page makeup, and there
is a long learning curve to become halfway efficient at it, and everyone
has different software. The articles would have to get to a different
person each time. I wouldn't mind doing just the copyediting (grammar and
spelling) of individual articles. I'm a retired tech editor so I'm pretty
fast at that, and the standards for a club newsletter are pretty relaxed
anyway.
>
>Actually, I believe we are on the threshhold of being able to eliminate the
>printed newsletter. It would be interesting to find what percentage of
>Potterers have access to the net. If it is more than 70 or 80 percent, it
>might be a good move to eliminate the printed newsletter and just post it to
>the Potter web site. Those that do not have access will be doing so in the
>near future. You can purchase a TV internet box for around $300 and that
>price is coming down.
Actually we wouldn't need the newsletter per se because all material would
be on the web page. But I know there are still quite a few members who do
not have Internet access and need the hardcopy newsletter. I doubt if we
will be 100% Internet for some time yet.
If we can generate Acrobat files, we could give members the option of
electronic delivery. The Acrobat (pdf) files would be sent as e-mail
attachments. That would reduce the printing and mailing cost and labor
considerably. Those choosing E-delivery would have the benefits of prompt
delivery, color, and search capability, and they could either print out the
newsletter or read it on screen, and they would not have to file the paper
version because it could be stored on disk.
>
>I sell real estate specific software and the slogan of my company,
>Performance Marketing is, "Technology is like the building of a road. Either
>you're on the steamroller or you become part of the road." If a sailor does
>not have internet access, they certainly have a friend who does who can print
>out the newsletter for them. We don't need to spend the money and time on a
>printed newsletter for the technologically disabled anymore.
Perhaps you are right and the time has come for that. If we eliminated the
newsletter mailing we could then eliminate membership fees, and then we
would have no official membership. Would that be good or bad?
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Jan 31 2000 - 03:27:06 PST