Six years ago this month, I took over the reins as ‘editor-in-chief’ of the Evergreen Woodworkers Guild newsletter from Cal Brodie.
The Woodpecker, as it was named, usually ran about four pages. Back then, it was mailed to members by the good ‘ol US Postal Service. Rob Stokes was the Guild President, and helped to make the meetings fun, enjoyable and informative. Besides Rob as the president, Roger Goad was VP and Program Coordinator, Loren Sisley was the Treasurer, the Secretary was Gary Roth, and Joe Gagner was the Librarian. The web site had just gone ‘live’ a month before on January 22, 2002.
The Board of Directors included Bob Mitchell, Gordon Patnude, Michael Dresdner, John McCoy, and Calvin Brodie. We had just had our first super raffle and just announced that we were moving our meetings to the Sumner Woodworking Store.
Six years later, I am still the newsletter editor. I also manage the web site. The two naturally go together. As editor, I have had what I thought were ‘good runs’ and some not so good. Lately, I have been on what I think is a good streak, maybe one of the best. Thanks to the help of Joyce and David Lamberson, who have taken on the copying and distribution part of the process, I can focus. I have managed to produce from eight to ten pages each month. I am again starting to enjoy the work. For the first time, people even sent email or came up to me in meetings and said how much they enjoyed reading the newsletter.
I still believe that there is room to improve.
I often hold onto to news items too long, waiting for the next newsletter. It seems that updates or tools for sale came in just after I send the last email. There is sometimes a wait until the next issue. Sometimes, things get lost in the waves of emails during the wait.
I do not get much in the way of feedback. Sure, there was a survey, and everyone was very positive. However, if someone reads an article and has a comment, they should have a way to respond right away. This ‘one way’ communication seems to me to be blocking a lot of good woodworking exchange among the members.
Third, there is no easy way to go back and find information in the previous newsletters. Many of them are in Adobe PDF, and some are in web page format and some are in email. I tried out different styles and vehicles to communicate over the years.
So, what?
So, I believe that this format, a blogging format, can solve these issues.
Messages can be communicates without delay. People can comment back immediately. Guild members can contribute freely. I hope you all do. A blog can be searched. Members, or anyone for that matter, can sign up to get email notices whenever something new is posted. I hope you all do that too.
The EWWG web site won’t be affected. I will just add a link from there to here. This is the main story; the Woodpecker is retiring. For those few members still without email, we will find a point in time before the meeting to print this out and mail it to them.
I hope you all like it. And I hope that it encourages more timely discussion about information that is current and of interest. So, tell me what you think won’t you? The comment button is just below this section…
Work safely,
Bill Cogswell
I love it. I especially like the option to sign up to get email notices whenever something new is posted. Now tell us just how to do that. Where do we sign up?
By the way, this is particularly pleasant for me since it mirrors the Facebook model, and yesterday my kids told me in no uncertain terms that I am too old to be messing about in Facebook, and that doing so would be an affront not only to them, but to the dignity of humankind.
Now we have this; the over the hill woodworker’s version. I couldn’t be happier.