North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Claude Sweet <hortventures@cox.net>]

The problems you are discussing have been discussed for years in the California Rare Fruit Growers with no progress because the majority of the membership consisted of older people who were not computer savvy and lacked a high speed Internet connection. Eventually their numbers have declined, but still no action to explore a second tier membership with a reduced rate electronic distribution.

I am the editor of a month news publication and bi-monthly journal for our figure skating club with a membership of about 300.

The printing and postage were a financial burden. Since switching to electronic distribution, I have been able to expand the number of articles and include color photos. The files are prepared as a Word document and then converted to a pdf file and reduced in size by using Adobe Acrobat.

Recently I have begun to post the files to a host site to allow members to download individual articles.

While the news publication contains only information that concerns our members, the journal has a more generic content that would be of interest to other skaters.  I am present working on an exchange system with other editors who will supply original content in return for articles I have written. I have formulated the journal as an on-line class with discussion just as if club members were physically in a classroom at an education institution.

I believe this approach would work well for other organizations who understand that changes are needed to remain a viable group.  Organizations must attract and maintain a younger membership base and then maintain their interest as they age, have children, and retire.

There is no reason to suppose that people from the USA and other countries would not pay a nominal fee to benefit from being an electronic member, especially if that membership provided special benefits such as a seed fund. Most people who would join are likely the same type of people who form the bulk of this electronic forum and understand the networking benefits the electronic media provides.

http://members.cox.net/e-news/MainIndex.html

Claude Sweet
San Diego, CA
USA



Jwlehman@aol.com wrote:

Hi Barry,

Five minutes after I sent this you e/m came.

Here is want Nate, Martha, Robert I & started discussing. We should bring you into the conversation also.

Nate wrote and I insereted in blue.

Of the other suggestions, I think we do need to have an online version for people abroad who want to join but think the subscription price per year is too high.  I would be easy to put Pomona into pdf, and mail it to the Mulla Omar, for example, who has paid a 5 or 10$ a year subscription.  The problem would be how to prevent the Mulla from then sending it to all the people in his village for free, or back to the United States or Canada at a cut rate to people who want it here.  Essentially, that is what is done in China with CDs. I share the same concern. How long would it be before we found out if such were going on? We could try it and if that became a problem simply cancel that member's membership (then another might take his place) or even the program of electronic Pomona's. But I believe Jackie can create PDF's just by the push of the button. How about just sending it on a disk? Still an unscrupulous character could also copy it electronically and e/m out. 

I'd have no problem giving it a try and make it known the program is subject to cancellation with maybe six months notice. Having more members especially foreign members might increase the number of articles. But I really doubt that as most would be afraid of their authoring abilities in English.

Jerry



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