2005-07-10 Newsletter #3: "Communicate or Die" Gains More Speed and Interest
Wow! This week has seen CoD's busiest week to date.
We now have 42 members and are serving an average of 400 page views per day by real, live people (page views by search engines and site administrators aren't counted). I think this is tremendous for a community that has only been around a little over a month. Thanks to everyone who has registered and participated to help breathe life into CoD!
We had some very interesting developments and great conversations over the past week. If you missed them, here's some highlights and special mentions:
First we are honored to welcome Professor Shostak, http://www.communicateordie.com/user/32, join as a member of the CoD community. Professor Shostak, a retired sociologist from Drexel University, has piled up many accomplishments throughout his career. But he is best known to the labor movement for his book, CyberUnion, where he urges unions to embrace Internet technology or else risk withering into irrelevance. Professor Shostak has generously agreed to field questions from our members. You can ask your question of Professor Shostak in our forums at http://www.communicateordie.com/forum/44.
Tony Budak, http://www.communicateordie.com/user/29/view, deserves special mention and thanks for his enthusiasm and work building the CoD community. He has gone out of his way to offer suggestions and recommendations for improvement and to help spread the word to the rest of the Internet that CoD is here and open for business. This is exactly the kind of participation that CoD needs to grow and thrive. I can't emphasize enough that the CoD community is designed to be a collaborative effort between all of its members. Thanks, Tony, for grasping this idea and running with it.
Special attention needs to be drawn to the conversation at http://www.communicateordie.com/node/94, particularly the posts by Kathy Naumann, http://www.communicateordie.com/user/17. I think Kathy's posts exemplify the kind of value the CoD community can bring to each of us. One thing CoD is about is sharing our ideas, experiences and expertise with each other so we can bring change to the labor movement. I look forward to reading more from Kathy.
Another interesting post deserves special mention. It comes from Michael Leger, http://www.communicateordie.com/user/42, who calls attention to CoD's somewhat confusing format and asks the big "What's the purpose?" question at http://www.communicateordie.com/node/116. If you, too, are still wondering what CoD is about, give that a read along with my responses. It might help you shed some light on what we're trying and where this is all headed. Out of that conversation came the idea for me to develop goals to go along with our mission. You can see those goals listed in the first FAQ question on http://www.communicateordie.com/node/92.
Of course, there's a lot more that happened over the last week. Just head on over to http://www.communicateordie.com/tracker to find out what's been posted since you last visited the CoD community.
I can't end this newsletter until I make another appeal to everyone to please consider making a blog entry on our site at http://www.communicateordie.com/node/add/blog. I know from seeing the profile of each new member that comes in that there many, many, years of experiences and tons of ideas out there. Please don't keep your thoughts locked up in your head. In the spirit of collective effort and action, I urge you to come and take the time to share what you know and think with everyone in the CoD community.
In Solidarity,
Steve Dondley