valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Valerie Mates valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Val valerie Jan 8 04:50:16 2004 Valerie Mates valerie111 responses total.
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* Hand out leaflets, or bookmarks, promoting Grex. Ideas for a good
time to do this: downtown, in the time before and after a home
football game. Downtown midnight madness sale -- end of October,
I think.
* What does an ad in the Observer cost?
You know, Community access TV is also another way to get the word out. How about a spot on Access Soapbox? It's totally free. You cannot beat that price.
Already arranged, Jim. We're also producing a couple of videos about how to use GREX to be aired on CTN. (A professional videographer is doing the production, so it should look pretty good!)
This item is now linked to Co-op.
If anyone wants to distribute fliers, but doesn't have any ideas for what to say, I have a stock of flier ideas and I'd be glad to create a flier for you to duplicate and distribute. Just contact me!
I say paint the rock, repeatedly, and Poet's Alley ;}
would poet's alley be the alley wheich runs between tally ahll and the michigan theatre?
"the rock" is one of the most ancient objects of its size above ground in Ann Arbor. It should be restored, and respected as a symbol of the origin of our landscape. Others have been vandalizing it - let's not add advertising - even for grex - to the infamy.
(actually, i've been wondering for a while now just how thick the paint on the rock really is. and i understand that painting it was decriminalized a few years ago.)
(Actually, the rock was moved to a sanctuary some years ago. What's there now is solid paint.)
Not only legalized, but regulated. There are rules for how the rock gets painted and how the materials used are to be disposed of.
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i once went with a friend to peel the rock. we tore off layers half an inch thich and there was still more. there is a plaque on the rock under the paint, but it is impossible to tell what it says...
Unfortunately, they don't regulate the type of paint you use... I sat on it recently, and paint was sheeting off. Rather messy. (The green stuff under it wouldn't wash for anything, either).
One thing I objected to is a while back that someone had actually engraved the rock with a cross. It's not the symbol I was disgusted with, just the fact that someone would actually engrave it.
Good lord. its a rock. it doesn't need to be rotected. the whole world is one big rock. *smiles* with lots of paint opn it ;} poet's all... um.. i think so... i haven't been there since I was 15 how would I remember...
Um, back to publicizing grex... Pioneer Theater Guild is doing four shows of Once Upon a Mattress later this month. Advertising is available in the programs that will be given to each member of the audience (hopefully 3000 people). Off the top of my head, I think the rates are $30 for a business card, $45 for a quarter page, $60 or $70 for half a page, and $100 for a full page. A page is equivalent to half a page of computer paper. I'm thinking grex will want to stick to the business card size, since we have very little to say in an ad anyway. I'm not sure of the deadline, but it's fairly soon.
(So, jenna,. you like all the graffiti on rocks along freeways - how about a big painted advert on Half Dome, in Yosemite? Rocks *are* protected, for aesthetic and even scientific reasons. Painting natural features of an area - rocks, trees, people's houses, their cars - what have you - is all vandalism, unless you *own* whatever you paint. The acquiescence of the city to having "the rock" painted was a cop out and has set a very bad example to children.)
I would disagree. I'd say that allowing people to paint the rock would lower the instance of other vandalism. I know that if I wanted to paint something, I'd rather paint the rock legally than something else illegally and run the risk of being caught.
I think dang's right. Re #18: Steve, could you find out that deadline for us? Unless told otherwise, I suspect we will wait for the next board meeting to allocate money for an ad. So if the deadline is sooner, we'll have to make a decision via e-mail, which takes a little longer. Anyway, post that date as soon as you can, would you? Thanks.
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Actually, what the heck, I'd split the cost of a $45 ad with you, Valerie, if you can think of some text for it.
The deadline is most assuredly before the next board meeting, since the show goes up the night after the next board meeting would usually occur. Any idea what you want to say?
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Presumably. has to fit on a half page width, though.
I did a project on painted rocks in high school, and turned up several in Washtenaw County and Western Wayne County. We were told about the plack on the Washtenaw/Hill painted rock, and peeled off about an inch and a half of paint to see what it says. It dedicates the rock to George Washington on his 200th birthday. I grew up right around the corner from that rock, and have always liked it as a neighborhood landmark. Some of my former neighbors did try to get it removed a few years ago, complaining about paint being left in their yards. Those of us who liked having the rock around pointed out that the nearest public trash cans were several blocks away. The city added some trash cans next to the rock, and as far as I know the problems have gone down considerably. The rock really does give some character to the neighborhood.
..of course, the *nature* of the "character" is pretty questionable...
You might remind ad readers that the '8-n-1' stuff just might be taken care of by their computer telecom system, if they have new stuff, like Windows '95.
Lord... if people didn't paint it, it would have been bulldozed by now. I'm all for conservation, in fact, I'm probbaly classes as a crazy enviornmentalist freak by some people, anmd I wouldn't argue with them. Designating ONE rock to be painted so that others get left alone seems like a GOOD idea to me. So does an add in a theatre porogram
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People been painting rocks for a lot longer than anyone you can think of has ever been around. Ayers rock was painted (in spots), nad a lot of caves in france got painted...
So, would you have selected the *one* rock in Ann Arbor dedicated to George Washington, with a plaque installed, and placed in "George Wasshington Park, to be the rock to be randomly painted? People have been vandalizing *everything* for a lot longer.....are you justifying vandalism because lots of people do it? (Yes, those caves in France got vandalized too...sigh.)
Grex should be publicized better on the UM campus. Grex is in this huge college town, and yet only a handful of UM students seem to use it. Print out a b unch of fliers and plaster the campus. Especially near computer labs and places likethat where people can access grex.
Hmmmm....you want *all* the students at UM to use Grex? Heh..
Where is the rock?
Not *all* the students at UM but certainly some...Grex should have a presence on campus. Plenty of students sitting around labs would try grex if they knew it exsisted. I always found it a bit odd that grex actually has more users from the student population at tiny McKendree College in downstate Illinois, then big Univ. of Michigan, right in its own backyard.
We've had a pretty active campaign to attract the married students and their spouses on the theory that UM students have confer, but their spouses might like the idea and want a place to do similar things. (e-mail home, chat with friendly, like-minded folks, etc.) So far we haven't noticed a lot of response, though it might just be that folks aren't saying much when they come around. I figure that the next time I do a flier campaign there I'll emphasize that you can get on GREX from the downtown library, too.
At the next UM home football game, plaster the parking lots with fliers... there cant be a h igher concentration of people at one place in the state than on a football saturday in A2. Put a bunch of grex fliers on windshields, hand'em out to passers by. Fliers that have GREX in big letters and "FREE EMAIL!" "FREE WEB PAGES!" "FREE CONFERFENCING" it isnt that hard to publicize something like grex, it is just a matter of doing it.
Of the near 100 computer professionals in my building, I am
amazed I am one of a few that know of GREX or M-net. Seems GREX
helps make computer professionals, but few professionals seem to
come to GREX.
See if you can get the computer repair stores to give out
a flier with the returned computer. Maybe Computer Renisannce or
Computer Medic could find out enough about GREX to sponsor a
phone line. Could we make them aware enough to turn 'dead',
unrepairable, or unwanted computers over to us instead of tossing
them in the dumpsters?
I don't think it's surprising there are so few UM students on grex. UM has its own computer conferencing system, using Confer, and UM students are used to *much* better network connectivity than grex has.
Rane, George Washington Park was so named a few years ago, as part of the compromize that kept the rock there and made it legal to paint it. It really isn't much of a park. It's a small patch of grass between three roads at a street corner. It has more in common with a median than a park. There is a tradition of painting a rock near the campus. There are plenty of other rocks around that aren't painted. Relax.
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Well, I will ask here for the answer to a Really Stupid Question which will enable me to get off my butt and get some flyers made, flyers which I started planning in November '96: What's the keyword I need to look up in the manual to learn how to insert a .gif (the Grex Logo) into a MS Word document? <krj mumbles something about Grex Standard Time.>
I think you need a "GIF filter" to read it in. I assume you tried looking under "GIF", so you must have a different version of Word than I do. So my advice is probably meaningless.
try "place..." it works in pagemaker...
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Thanks for aruba for the tip about the GIF filter for reading the Grex logo into MS Word. Next Really Stupid Flyer Problem: The B&W Grex logo I have is too large for the flyers and bookmarks I have planned. I tried scaling it down with "xv" on Unix, but the greyscale building elements develop weird pattern, and the "Electronic Town Hall" legend turns to mush. Suggestions?
Delete the text portion and replace it with appropriate sized text in a similar font after scaling?
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Or, if you've got the option, use a program with an auto-trace feature to get a line-art representation of the image, works much better for scaling geometric-shapes & such..
Sigh, I really need to read co-op more frequently. However, waaaay back there Richard suggested putting flyers on all the parked cars at UM games. I wont go into all the logical reasons that you would not reach UM students that way. But I will remind everyone who lives in Ann Arbor that the reason your cars dont get plastered with handouts every time you park somewhere is because it is AGAINST THE LAW in Ann Arbor to do so.
that is no excuse catriona! we must reach more people, and the only way we can do that is fliering cars during football games. besides there is no way the police would know who left the fliers there. so let's do it! (Did I mention that I wasn't Richard Wallner?)
I think that was made clear. ;)
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Really? I'm suing Zap Zone, who flyered me last week. BTW (sorry about the delay) the deadline for ads in the Once Upon a Mattress program appears to be Monday.
(Had me fooled, Robh)
Well since Im not from A2, I dont know the local laws...Im an old political activist and doing massive flyer'ing is a basic technique. Have to be thinking of Grex as a message that needs to be spread...have to get it on people's minds. I mean at least I had an idea...one more idea than robh has had involving grex and how to improve it at least.
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The no-stuff-on-windshields is part of Ann Arbor's anti-littering ordinance. Seems like the city council didnt like finding trash flying around all the time, and will bill the person/organization that litters for trash collection. So Grex may end up with a bill from the city.
Re 59 - True, I may not have as many, um, "ideas" as you, but at least I've kept the place running by contributing money. Can you say the same?
Oh, do let's get into a huge argument about this one more time. I don't think the last one got people angry enough. :)
On flyer-making: Valerie, thanks for the suggestion to convert the logo .gif to a .jpg before reducing it. That seemed to help a lot. I will report further progress. Tum-te-dee-tum...
There is no harm min passing out flyers to those people who are having tailgate parties. /s/min/in
A thought about the fliers - I recall a while back that someone mentioned putting "Free E-mail" and the like on them. It occurs to me that, given the regular complaints about e-mail hogging resources and 'why can't we get more users in the conferences', advertising the e-mail might be a bad way to go about it.
Good thought, orinoco.
(about vandalism -- I'm all in favor of decorated buildings and pavement... all in favor, especially if the decoartion aren't obscene)
(Yes, but unfortunately that doesn't appear to be a common view :P )
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Given the apparently large number of young Grex users, why not promote Grex in high schools and freshman (college) orientations?
All the reasons that local college students are not good candidate for Grexing have been explained. Primarily, they have so much better access to the net from school than we could ever provide, and most of them are so busy making new friends at school that they dont have time to add Grex to the list. On the other hand, high-schoolers might be a good group to try to reach. Unfortunately, high-school orientations are not designed to introduce kids to their community, only their high-school. Many groups would like access to orientation so they could target this market. Our best hope is to help a group of high-school folks put together materials and presentations that they can give themselves.
We do have some fairly active Grexers who are UM students. Sure, many have their own conferences and aren't interested, but I imagine some of them might find us more interesting. Some posters around campus wouldn't hurt.
Is there a FestiWinter?
One thing those of us with web pages can do is to install a link to Grex. I have one on my page.
Yeah, metoo.
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I think there's a winter equivilent of FestiFall. I sat a table in it in the Union ballroom when I was involved with a UM student organization a few years ago. I think, though, that Grex would have to become a UM student organization to participate in that.
We could start a "Friends of Grex" student organization. :)
Thats a cool idea, actually.
Purchase ad space in student newpapers? Be sure to ask if they have lower rates for "not for profits".
I would like to propose that "we" buy an ad in the program book for ConFusion, the January SF convention run by the Ann Arbor Science Fiction Association. $35 dollars will buy half a page; $20 will buy a quarter page. Space reservation deadline is 25 November; copy deadline is 1 December. Our ad would be seen by several hundred slightly geeky, mostly computer-literate people who love to talk endlessly. We should reinforce the ad with a mess o' flyers at the convention. There are probably a half-dozen Grexers who will be there. I can be the point person on this if there are no other volunteers.'
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Is having a file called .signature in your home dir all you nead to have a signature on your e-mail?
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hu? i don't get that... and i use elm... and i always wondered how i would do that... I LOATHE mail and don't really care for pine... so... i learned the basics of how to use mail in less than 10 minutes.
To enable signatures for elm, do 'cd .elm' and edit the elmrc file. In particular, the entry you want to change is localsignature. Just set it to point to the file containing the signature you want. If you're signature-savvy and know that '-- ' means begin-signature-so-clever-programs-can-delete-me-when-responding, don't insert it because elm will do it for you. Happy mailing..
... or just edit .elm/elmrc, instead of doing the cd to .elm. Note that
either way, that "." at the beginning of ".elm" is a necessary part of
the directory name.
Actually, elm supports not one but two different signatures. The line
beginning "localsignature = " should specify a path to a file which you
want to be used as your signature on your local (to Grex) mail, and the
line beginning "remotesignature = " should specify a path to a file
containing your signature for mail going offsite (or, I think, anything
for which you specify a domain, even if that's cyberspace.org). The
two may of course point to the same file. Example:
localsignature = $HOME/.elm/.localsignature
You would then need to create a file in your .elm directory called
.localsignature
Oh, and as your elmrc file is initialized, you'll have "###" at the
beginning of the line. Sometimes people don't realize they have to
take those out to activate the line ...
If you don't *have* a .elm/elmrc file, it's because you've never set any
of your options. To create one (with all the default settings you've
been using): in elm, select "o" for "options" and then ">" to save them.
(You may, of course, first make any changes you want, in the few options
elm lets you change through this screen.)
response #44: Tonight I finally (!!!) finished a flyer promoting the music conference. Heedless of the cost, I rushed my masters to Kinko's, ordered up a couple hundred, and left a few copies of the flyers at Schoolkids, Borders and Tower. It's only a year after I started talking about this. There are 400 flyers so far. Mark Ziemba and I will sprinkle them around record shops in town, and I will work on a lower-cost second printing. (There is also a variant version of the flyer which leaves out the local phone numbers; I'm taking that one to the CD stores in East Lansing.) ---------- response #82: Uh-oh, the copy deadline for the ConFusion program book is almost upon us. Misti: do you have a phone contact for the person handling the advertising for this book? And can someone get me a higher quality small image of the Grex logo? The ones I have made by whacking down the Big Honking Image are kind of jaggy; it's not too objectionable on a flyer but I'd like to do better for the program book.
Nope. But you might ask Kathy Becker if she knows.
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Just as a note, I tried to make GREX a day sponsor with Michigan radio and was told that for individuals it costs $200. I pledged that and then found out that for any sort of organization it's impossible to become a day sponsor -- the best I could do would be to sponsor an organizational challenge. For $600. That would get the GREX name mentioned several times during *one* two hour broadcast block on one day of the fund drive. I love GREX, but I don't love GREX that much. I wonder if other radio stations have better deals...?
Maybe we could get some sort of Public Service Announcement plug on WCBN? I dunno how much of that stuff they do.
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Just out of curiosity I wonder how much an advertisement on a commer- cial radio station, such as WTKA or WIQB, costs. I think we'd have more success attracting people from the listenership of WUOM, but you never know. On WTKA, for instance, we could say we're the local cyberspace "talk show."
Yep, I've heard that too, Valerie, but that's exactly what I tried to do and was told it was completely against policy. I even talk to the station manager. (Maybe we've heard it on WEMU?)
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wemu has day sponsors too. however the psa (public service announcement) is the way to go (imo) because it is a zero-cost option. yes, it gets shuffled in with the other psa's so the frequency is not as high, however psa's can run for many months. one key is that the psa needs to announce some sort of public event, of which, the grex walk has the highest profile probably. ALL radio stations provide for psa's.
update on the Confusion Program Book Ad: I have finally located
the editor of the Confusion Program Book -- thanks to tpryan for
giving me useful contact e-mail addresses at the Grexbrunch.
I see the ad as a half-page horizontally: something like this:
-----
IT'S WEEKS UNTIL THE NEXT CONVENTION...
... on GREX, the discussions are always online!
GREX conferences on SF | Books | Comics | Gaming |
Movies | Music | Politics | How We Live
LOGO On the Internet:
http://www.cyberspace.org
telnet grex.cyberspace.org
HERE
In Ann Arbor:
761-3000 2400bps
761-5041 9600bps
-----
Are there any other conferences which should be specifically
promoted to science fiction fans? Suggestions for phrasing improvements
are welcome...
The Board voted to spend $30 on this. I'll cover the last $5 for
a half-page ad.
Thanks Ken! Looks great to me. I thin you could replace telnet grex.cyberspace.org with telnet cyberspace.org for simplicity. But either way is fine.
Is there still a separate fantasy .cf? Might that be of interest?
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The fantasy conference seems moderately lively, too, so I'll definitely add this into our ad. We have space reserved in the program book. The editor would like laserprint camera ready copy, or else a file suitable for insertion into Pagemaker under Windows 95. Valerie, I'll have to get together with you on Monday, I think. Small world department: the program book editor is Susan Hope Dundas, a former Grexer/M-netter.
Other creative places on GREX may be of note
? story.cf? poetry?
update on the ConFusion program book ad: Valerie and her copy of Sierra Print Artist whipped up a beautiful ad last week. Tonight I delivered it to Hope. Hope charged us the fannish rate, which was only $17.50 for a half page; I paid with a personal check. Had I known we were going to get a discount I would have arranged for a whole page; however, at this point I'm too busy to consider re-doing it.
That's great that we got a discount! I'll send you a check, Ken.
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That leaves a precedent and enough to do it again for the Contraption program book.
You have several choices: