North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["MARIE ASHTON" <bwoodtx@verizon.net>]

If you are going to open up NAFEX to world members, which I think is a good 
idea, you may want to consider changing the name to Fruit Explorers of the 
World - FEW. Like William stated you change with the times and more forward. 
I know that NAFEX as a name has a long and revered history but just consider 
a world-wide name for a moment. I know that change is hard in anything but 
new members would be nice and the information they would bring to the table 
would be even nicer. Just think of what new members for example from England 
could bring to the table about apple varieties and cultural practices.

It should be fairly easy to send out Pomona as a e-mail attachment in PDF 
file form to members that are out-of- country. You have to get it to some 
form just to print our paper copies. You could make the PDF Pomona a lower 
membership rate as it does not cost anything to send it out, just a little 
extra time in preparing the PDF file. That should satisfy the international 
members.

There already is a world-wide professional horticultural organization, why 
not a small grower organization. There are a lot of things that some of 
these foreign fruit growers have knowledge of that might be of great 
interest to all of us.

As some of you know, I have been working with pomegranates for some time now 
and a lot of the good information has came from foreign sources (as well as 
hands on experience). We now have a world-wide pomegranate organization that 
has just started in the last few months. There is great interest and 
membership is growing fast. This is just a example of what is possible.

Just something to think about. I like NAFEX like it is now but everything 
changes as all of us should know better than most.

Regards,
Richard Ashton
Oak Creek Orchard
www.oakcreekorchard.com
bwoodtx@verizon.net

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "William C. Garthright" <billg@inebraska.com>
To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2008 6:23 PM
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Membership


> > I did not mean that NAFEX should change the name.  However, the outlook 
> > and policy should change in accordance with time.
>
>
> Yes, you either move forward or you die. Clearly, when it comes to
> communication at a distance, the Internet is the future. Eventually, I
> suppose that paper copies will cease and everything will go by email.
> Not yet, of course. There are plenty of members who don't have email,
> I'm sure. But that's the direction things are going. It's just so much
> cheaper and easier. (But I have no idea how long that will take, and I'm
> not urging a current change like that.)
>
> Still, NAFEX might consider an email-only membership for those who are
> outside North America. I don't know how "Pomona" is put together,
> whether or not it could easily be emailed, too. If not, then
> international memberships might not get that publication (I imagine that
> the mailing costs would be considerable). But though the focus would
> probably remain with North America, international memberships offer a
> lot to a group like ours. I'm sure we're all well aware of that.
>
> An organization has to look to the future or fade with the past. This
> certainly does *not* mean ignoring long-time or older members, the
> foundation of the group. It just means that times change and
> organizations must change with them. There must be a reason, after all,
> why NAFEX is HALF the size it used to be.
>
> Just some thoughts...
>
> Bill
> Lincoln, NE
>
> --
> There's this thing called being so open-minded your brains drop out. -
> Richard Dawkins
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