(and DO something while you're there!)
by Cynthia Beal
Intrepid mountain-state forum guru Bill Dale is managing the Salons, at
http://www.angelfire.com/mn/inforest/grasslist.html
Here you can ask more questions, post and check out URLs, start technical
or interest-specific forum threads that can include more people over time
through more accessible archival features, jump to other forums from your
browser, mail documents to listservs, and a host of other things.
These forums enable the creation of "online libraries" of information,
available to you at anytime. The forums are web pages that you - the end
user - create. Once you learn the basics, they're no harder to use than
email.
The information you gather and contribute is posted in a Forum, where it
can be utilized by anyone, anytime. Only those interested in the topic will
read it. If you register to receive Alerts, you'll be emailed updates of
all postings, in digest form, to any forums you're interested in keeping
up
with, whether you visit the site or not.
The Millennium Salons site has two basic sections:
Section 1: The
Millennium Salons Forum -
A collection of discussion forums
--> The Millenium Salons: a place for general y2k discussion; Use this
for
the philosophy, economic, political and other information threads that
don't really fit as fare meant for all Listserv Members' Mailboxes.
--> Millennium Ready Mix: a vehicle for collaborative work on things
like
those reports and letters everybody's always saying everybody should be
compiling, writing, handing out, and mailing.
--> Contingency Planning: a place for information about and discussion
of a
difficult issue. Contigency planning sounds simple, but it's tough to get
a
grip on. This forum is for helping with that process, especially as it
pertains to overall Community Contingency Planning
--> Scratchpad: discussion of Alternative Communications (including packet
radio), Harlan Smith's More Austere Infrastructure concept, and other
working topics that may expand to forums of their own if they get a lot
of
traffic.
--> Links to other discussion y2k discussion forums on and listservers
on
the net...
Section 2: Projects
you can work on / Tools you can use
The most basic objective of this section is to provide people with
downloadable, printable, or suitable for emailing Tools they can use in
their efforts to deal with y2k in their communities and beyond. You'll find
some of those Tools there now. If you think you can use them, do it.
You can send in, help define and create other Tools via the Millennium
Ready Mix forum. The basic idea is to use the "Projects you can work
on"
component of the web site to work with others to create the tools that will
be placed on web pages when they're completed. Web pages anyone in the
world can access and use to help mitigate y2k's threats, and prepare for
whatever the actualities might be.
Bill Dale starts new Millennium Salons
forum:
Just so you'll both be aware, I just got done posting the following into
the Millennium Salons forum:
In her excellent post, "Lane County, Oregon - How to get involved locally,"
Cynthia Beal quotes Tom Altee as saying:
"We are early on the curve here; we're all on the leading edge. We
are all
researching the "manual" for how to do what we're doing, what
we need to
do. No instructions exist. They are being written piece by piece, as we
go
along. "We build the road we travel." You need to join in the
road
building, as well as the traveling. Try some things, make some mistakes,
learn something -- and then tell the rest of us. Ian's idea of a "best
practices" log is great; it will make a tremendous difference. At the
same time, we
can't wait. We need to move ahead. We will never know enough to succeed.
We will
always know enough to learn, share, and feel our way together."
In that spirit, a category called "Best Practices" has now been
established
in this forum, and you are invited to post your personal and your
community's experience with what seem to be those best practices under it.
If you're not familiar with how the categories function of this software
works, please take a moment to read the "About" page. Essentially,
if you
have a best practice to communicate, or you have a best practices section
on your community's y2k site that you want to post the URL of, when you
create a new thread to do so ("Ask a New Question"), you'll be
presented
with a pull-down menu in the text entry area that has the existing category
options in it. You'll see the "Best Practices" heading listed
there.
Selecting it will make sure that your post stays grouped with the other
best practices posts when it disappears off the "New Questions"
list on the
upper part of the forum's main screen when the "expiration" date
comes up.
Contributing your experiences and URLs to this category will help other
communities, so please post what's worked, or seems to be working best.
For those who haven't been to the Salons site yet, head for this address...
http://www.angelfire.com/mn/inforest/grasslist.html
See you there!