ELP Digest Vol. 22 #01
01 Jan 2012
The "Drink a Toast' Edition
As you may have noticed, 2011 was an off (or should I say odd) year for the ELP Digest. When last I wrote in April 2011 http://brain-salad.com/Digest/back-issues/2011/elp-digest-21-03.txt), I had decided to transition the ELP Digest email list to an online forum in Google Groups called the "ELP-channel" (because Google Groups doesn't let you use the work Digest in a Group name).
The overall motivation was to provide the same kind of ELP news in a method that was more immediate for those people who have the time and ambition to read/comtribute on a more frequent basis than my very irregular Digest schedule but still accessible for those with less time. I especially liked that subscribers could (a) choose to get auto-generated email updates (though, admittedly, the only choice seemed to be a daily update) and (b) could manage their own subscription.
As I'm sure many of you have noticed, with the many social networks (Facebook, Google+, etc.) and forums/discussion boards (e.g., the Yahoo ELP-DISC group that I've mentioned in the Digest a number of times), many of us are using email for less communication and I thought the time had come for the ELP Digest to move beyond its email mailing list existence.
Anyway, since then I haven't sent out an ELP Digest because I was hoping that I could get people to contribute and read their ELP news there. But, to be honest, it has been less successful than I had hoped. Many of you have chosen not to join (possibly because it was harder to sign up without a 'Google account' than I had expected or because, for many of us, keeping up with even 'daily Digests' from the Google forums wasn't a good fit.
I tried to augment awareness of the ELP-channel by creating an ELP-channel Facebook page ( http://www.facebook.com/ELP.channel - note the 'dot' instead of hyphen due to Facebook syntax restrictions). This didn't seem to help (and may have confused things) since it was hard for people to figure out whether to post ELP news to the Facebook page or to use the ELP-channel group. Oh well. It was worth trying.
So, now, here we are at the beginning of 2012 and I'm going to re-think if/how the ELP Digest should evolve. 2012 looks like it could be a good year for ELP fans. If you haven't been catching up via any of the ELP outlets mentioned above (or elsewhere), here's some of what's been going on:
So... with the start of a new year, I'm going to re-group on the ELP Digest front. Though they will still be infrequent, I'm going to resume emailing the ELP Digest. As I figure out the best wat to to that, I'm going to try out a few things and we'll see what works best for the most fans.
So, please feel free to send contributions to the ELP Digest to: elp-digest@reluctant.com
To update your subscription info (add, remove, or change), please send email to: elp-digest-request@reluctant.com
To start, I'm think I'm going to go with the following plan:
So... as things roll out under this plan, if you want to cancel your email/group subscription, just let me know (or, on Google Groups, you can do this yourself. I won't take it personally!
Also, let's keep up the efforts to keep a high 'signal to noise' ratio in all of the forums. In the email version, it's easy for me to filter out the obvious noise. However, to keep information flowing, I've kept 'moderate comments' turned off in the Google Group. To make this work best, I'd ask that we all try to keep 'low value' comments at the absolute minimum. I don't mind disagreements in the conversation but too many 'me too' comments or snide remarks that don't really add additional value to the conversation tend to discourage people from reading and contributing to the news and information.
Thanks to all for contributing and reading.
Finally, of course, I want to wich everyone a very happy and healthy 2012!
- John - ELP Digest/ELP Channel, founder & editor