[FHS1987] The E-List Objectives

[James Welcher]

D.E. Perry writes:
 > I thought the objective of this mailing list was to keep Keith Purdy from
 > knowing about the reunion....  :D

Diane you aren't allowed to make anyone cry UNTIL THE REUNION IS OVER!

But that's a interesting point... what is the objective of this mailing list? It really is meant to be a discussion forum and not just an "announcements from the committee" list. So if you are looking for information about someone or if you have news you want to share with the class of 1987, this is a good place to post it. There is no moderation so it's not like anyone is going to get kicked off the list for being mean.

It's 7 months to go before the reunion, Keith, so I think we have some time to get the word out. Classmates.com is Evil but I think we have that avenue covered. Alicia has an account and I'm going to pay up for the full deal and then send a message to all FHS1987 people I find. We've also started combing some of the community sites like myspace, orkut, friendster, etc., but anyone who is interested in tracking down classmates can do the same thing. Just drop them an email and have them check out the website (http://virtual-reunion.com/fhs1987) or send a subscription request to fhs1987-request at virtual-reunion.com, or send me an email and I can set up their account.

Word of mouth is probably going to be our best mechanism for getting a hold of people. We have the Harris Connect "Franklin Alumni Directory 2006" and will probably use that for a round of postcard announcements but we are unable to just "lift" addesses out of that book into our own databases. But we should be able to get a better and more accurate set of addresses from the website.

I don't have the database backend hooked up to the website yet, but once that is going, the idea is that fhs1987-ers can update their US Mail addresses and phone numbers and email addresses and myspace pages, etc. There will be multiple privacy settings ranging from "public" to "fhs-only" to "fhs 1987 only" to "only organizers".

We'll also start collecting some information regarding who is planning on buying tickets to the reunion and who has a reservation at the hotel. NOTE: even if someone is NOT planning on going to the reunion, they should still sign up on the elist and/or website so that they can access any collected media we gather and get news announcements.

My objective for the website is that it will be a kind of "digital archive" for Class of 1987 related pictures and video. Most content will not actually be hosted on this site, it will be on flickr or myspace or youtube or wheverever because those site have the bandwidth and feature that we really can't compete with. However, we'll have an index with search function on our site that will point to that other content.

We're also planning some multimedia swag for the reunion. Currently, we already have one DVD in the can. It's the Christmas Concert from December 1986. So we'll make copies and distribute at the reunion.  However, I'm trying to locate some other multimedia before then. If you have a video tape of the all-school variety show or the Homecoming floats or something, drop me an email. I have cheeseball technology I can employ to make DVDs from videotapes, and they look pretty decent. However, if we have anyone who is now a video producer at WDIV or MTV or something and they want to do some fancy editing, also drop me an email.

For now, we have some scans up on Google's image service. Flickr is probably better, but Picasaweb is slightly freer. Not much up there right now, but it's a start:

http://picasaweb.google.com/livonia.franklin.1987

Anyone else with photos or video that is online or in a shoebox, let me know. We can come to some arrangement about making it available.

Alicia has been doing a lot of work with the Hotel folk (thanks Alicia!) and may have some news for us soon. I think we are starting to figure out the pricing and investigate some of the options (Open Bar?  DJ? Flowing Fountain of Purest Chocolate like FHS 1986 had at THEIR reunion?)

Anyone with strong opinions about that kind of thing may want to drop an email to fhs1987-owner at virtual-reunion.com which currently goes to Alicia and I. Anyone else who is interested in planning and/or scanning and/or otherwise helping out, drop us a line at that address.

-- 
James Welcher, james{at}buszard-welcher.com, jwelcher{at}gmail.com
http://jameswelcher.livejournal.com AIM{jbwelcher} SKYPE{jwelcher}