At the last Board Meeting we agreed to prepare a press release for the local papers about Grex coming up to speed on our new 670. I need user comments for colourful expository to finish the release. Tell us here 1) how you see Grex 2) what effect the 670 has had for you 3) anything about grex you'd like to see in the newspaper. Thanks all.49 responses total.
What effect the 670 has had? I saves me maybe 15 minutes a day reading and sending e-mail. I have stopped using Arbornet to use Altavista, and do not plan to renew my membership there, but donate extra to grex instead. I joined grex even though I was using Arbornet for e-mail and internet, and before I knew about the conferences, because the staff and other helpers are incredibly helpful! They answered all the questions about problems I was having getting things to work on Arbornet. Now I am hooked on the conferences, and am learning a whole lot about how other people function, and about things in general.
i do not remember grex ever being this fast since the internet connection was first established.
(1) For me Grex is a just a great sampler of different people of all ages,
from all walks of life, from Ann Arbor and around the world. In most
normal social situations I seem always to be talking to people who are
about the same age as me, have about the same job as me, and do about
the same things as me. Grex gives me a chance to talk to a much broader
range of people on a much broader range of subjects. Some of them, have
gotten to be extremely good friends, some of them will never be, but all
have helped enrich my life.
At the same time, I see Grex as a kind of noble cause. We let anyone
use our computer, no questions asked. We give away basic access to the
net. We help people learn how to use all this new technology. We run
the whole show democratically and cooperatively. All the work is done
by volunteers. It's all funded from the grass roots, not from any
corporate or government sponsership. It's refreshing to be a part of
something so fundamentally generous in nature.
(2) The new computer and the new internet connection mean that for the first
time in a long time our system isn't straining to support all the
people using it. It just works better than it ever has before, so we
can now welcome new people users to a system that can readily handle
more users, instead of to a system on the verge of collapse from massive
overload.
It took a lot of effort to get here - many of our users chipped in money
to buy the new equipment, and it took over a year for our volunteer staff
people to get the system put together and ready to use, but we made it,
and we should be all set to continue doing what we do for years to come.
So we are in great shape now - at least until another 10,000 users or so
show up and we have to invent some new ways to handle them all without
actually spending any money to speak of.
(3) Well, I loaded some of the points I think we ought to make in the text
above. Don't talk much about the system. Nobody knows or cares what a
Sun 4/670 is. All you have to say about it is that we changed from a
system that was so popular that it was creaking at the joints and hardly
able to carry the load, to one that zooms along and does it easily. I'd
talk a lot about why the old system was so slow - because it was such a
cool thing that way too many people wanted to use it. I'd make some
points about how using the system is free, but the new computer and the
new net connection were paid for by voluntary contributions from people
who liked what Grex was doing and wanted to see it grow.
Geez, a whole lot of what Jan said could be lifted without changing a single word it was stated so well. I'd also mention that through interactions with a diverse community you tend to get the chance to share and challenge some strongly held points of views. Grex is a learning experience. It is a tolerance builder. Grex fits into you schedule. Grex is fun.
I also like janc's stuff.
This response has been erased.
(Actually I think Jan just did a major portion of it -- thanks, Jan!)
(That was Jan's purpose - Jan doesn't actually talk like that under normal circumstances)
<grin>
OK, here's the first draft of the press release: comment away. For Immediate Release Local Conferencing System Picks Up Speed Ann Arbor, Michigan --- April 22, 1998 On Sunday, March 22, after a year-long project to upgrade to a faster computer, Grex is now up on a Sun 4/670 MP computer. The result, according to Steve Weiss, a Grex staffer involved with the switchover, is that each of Grex's processors should now run at several times the speed of the previous computer. Because of limitations in the operating system, the second processor may not be able to be used at 100%, but it will still help to speed things up. In addition, the new architecture should be much faster at switching "contexts," which is something done a lot under Grex's load. "We were very seriously limited by our processor speed before this change. For all we know, we may still be limited by it, but only time, and a heavy load, will allow us to know for certain." According to Jan Wolter, the president of the Board for Cyberspace communications, "The new computer and the new Internet connection mean that for the first time in a long time our system isn't straining to support all the people using it. It just works better than it ever has before, so we can now welcome new people users to a system that can readily handle more users, instead of to a system on the verge of collapse from massive overload. Not only have we changed over to a new computer, we have upgraded a lot of software. During the switchover, Grex's IP address was also renumbered. This only affects people who connect to Grex by typing "telnet 204.212.46.130". If you can reach Grex by typing "telnet cyberspace.org" or by dialing in on a modem, this change won't effect you. Mike McNally, another Grex staffer involved in the switchover, says For those who don't have a great deal of experience judging such events, the accomplishment of successfully switching over so many things at once and having everything work smoothly afterwards should not be underestimated Take it from me, who has done this for a living for a number of years, making major changes to an established service, particularly making a number of simultaneous changes, takes careful planning and a good deal of meticulous coordination. Once again, Grex's staff, our core group of volunteers, has accomplished wonders. Good job! Grex is an Ann Arbor-based computer conferencing community supporting over 17,000 users world-wide with online conversations, real time chats, e-mail, and UNIX shell accounts. Services are free to all callers, but the system is supported completely by user donations and volunteer labour. " For me Grex is a just a great sampler of different people of all ages, from all walks of life, from Ann Arbor and around the world." Says Jan Wolter. " In most normal social situations I seem always to be talking to people who are about the same age as me, have about the same job as me, and do about the same things as me. Grex gives me a chance to talk to a much broader range of people on a much broader range of subjects. Some of them have gotten to be extremely good friends, some of them will never be, but all have helped enrich my life. At the same time, I see Grex as a kind of noble cause. We let anyone use our computer, no questions asked. We give away basic access to the net. We help people learn how to use all this new technology. We run the whole show democratically and cooperatively. All the work is done by volunteers. It's all funded from the grass roots, not from any corporate or government sponsorship. It's refreshing to be a part of something so fundamentally generous in nature. It took a lot of effort to get here - many of our users chipped in money to buy the new equipment, and it took over a year for our volunteer staff people to get the system put together and ready to use, but we made it, and we should be all set to continue doing what we do for years to come. So we are in great shape now - at least until another 10,000 users or so show up and we have to invent some new ways to handle them all without actually spending any money to speak of. According to Mary Remmers "Through interactions with a diverse community you tend to get the chance to share and challenge some strongly held points of views. Grex is a learning experience. It is a tolerance builder." "Grex fits into you schedule." "Grex is fun." Steve Weiss adds "A lot of people raised a lot of money to buy the hardware. They deserve the most thanks. It was not cheap, but the power of this new configuration is exhilarating. Pedal to the metal. What effect the 670 has had? It saves me maybe 15 minutes a day reading and sending e-mail. I have stopped using Arbornet to use Altavista, and do not plan to renew my membership there, but donate extra to Grex instead. I joined Grex even though I was using Arbornet for e-mail and Internet, and before I knew about the conferences, because the staff and other helpers are incredibly helpful! They answered all the questions about problems I was having getting things to work on Arbornet. Now I am hooked on the conferences, and am learning a whole lot about how other people function, and about things in general." Eric Bassey comments, "I do not remember Grex ever being this fast since the Internet connection was first established." You can reach Grex at http://www.cyberspace.org and creating anew account or by setting your modems communication parameters to 8E1 and dialing (734) 761-3000 and logging in as newuser.
Steve (srw) I'd like your permission to substitute the words "another local conferencing system" for "Arbornet" if you don't mind...
Misti, you don't need Steve's permission, that was me you quoted from - the first paragraph was indeed Steve Weiss, but the next two were me. You certainly have my permission. I was just asked to renew membership on Arbornet and politely declined and they politely told me I would still have a guest account. THere are a few minor typos regarding punctuation, do you want them corrected? (Mostly regarding placement of quotation marks, some are missing.)
Thanks for doing this, Misti. I have no experience with press releases, but my gut instinct is to say that we should leave out most of the technical stuff in the first paragraph and pare down the quotes to be just the positive bits.
Last paragraph has "8E1", should be "8N1".
Thanks from me also, and I agree with Mark about paring down the technical details and the quotes. The last paragraph should mention the third way of getting to Grex -- telnetting to grex.cyberspace.org. I'd omit the earlier mention of that and the IP address.
Just as a reminder to those of you who may not be familiar with how newspapers edit press releases: A press release is "cut" to fit the available space by lopping of paragraphs from the bottom up. Misti _should_ have put technical stuff in the first paragraph if that's what we want the paper to include. Generally the first paragraph should stand alone as a complete tidbit for the general readership of that publication, and each succeeding paragraph should include information that appeals to a more and more specialized audience. Our quotes, therefore, should be arranged from the most "public" like user to the most technical, but move some techies higher if they have public name recognition. Remember that no newspaper has to run any press release. If, however, we can provide a release about a topic that the editors figure will help their business (ie get more readers, or appeal more strongly to the current readership than the competion), they are very likely to run it. And if that release is already written in newspaper article style, they are likely to run it without much editing (protests of 'independence' to the contrary--editors are busy people, and the more of their job we can do, the more likely they are to use our material).
thanks for your comments everyone -- and I'm sorry about the misattribution, Sindi -- I guess I got too sloppy with the cut and paste. I'll rewrite it and get back to you with the edited version.
Thanks for doing all this, Misti. I really like the splash screens on community access television too. Great job.
The lead paragraph mentions Grex, but does not really explain what it is. Even with the headline saying conferencing system, the lead should give enough information that it alone will tell any reader all they need to know to make sense of the article/release. Additionally, the second paragraph mentions Cyberspace Communications, but does not indicate that it is the organization which operates Grex, thus a reader would wonder (conceivably) why it is mentioned at all. If I may suggest an alternative lead: "One of the oldest public access sites on the internet just got a lot faster. Grex, an Ann Arbor based free conferencing system and virtual community just completed a year-long project to upgrade to a faster computer. Grex is run by a small non-profit called Cyberspace Communications, and is operated entirely by volunteer labor and supported solely by donations from the general public." Then, as suggested, we can go on into technical info and testimonials. Thanks, Misti, for taking the initiative to write this release and get the ball rolling. Great work!
Hey, cool! Thanks Eric!!
oops. just noticed i forgot the comma after 'community' in the second sentence.
It is not a non-profit organization. It gives the wrong impression...
Grex is indeed a non-profit organization. it is *not*, however, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. Yet.
I'd prefer to say "Grex is a small non-profit organization operated entirely by volunteer labor and supported solely by donations from users and the general public." Nobody should care what our corporate name is, after all.
Re #22: bru, what the hell are you talking about? There is absolutely *no* profit made by Grex, nor do any individuals benefit financially from its activities. And that is in accordance with our articles of incorporation, which are posted in this conference.
CCI is incorporated as a non-profit corporation under Michigan law.
I think other probably correctly identified where bru was confused.
This response has been erased.
The phrase I use to describe CCI is a Michigan not-for-profit corporation.
You may, but the correct term is "nonprofit" (no hyphen). Act 162 of 1982 is titled the "Nonprofit Corporation Act", and in the act the term used is always just "nonprofit". Re #27: it was a nit, but other referred to a non-profit *organization*, as did bru, and I wanted to emphasize that it is not only nonprofit by action, but by law.
a rather arcane nit <grin>
I like Eric's opening paragraph. I also agree that it wouldn't hurt to de-emphasize the "cyberspace communications" name, not because it isn't good, but because it makes the article less confusing. I might revise Eric's paragraph by merging in parts of Misti's fifth paragraph, like this: >One of the oldest public access sites on the internet just got a lot >faster. Grex, an Ann Arbor based conferencing system and virtual >community, just completed a year-long project to upgrade to a faster >computer. Grex is a small non-profit organization, operated entirely by >volunteer labor and supported solely by donations from the general public. >All Grex services are free of charge and available to everyone. Grex offers >users a wide range of tools to communicate with each other, including online >conversations in over 100 topical conferences areas as well as real-time chat >areas. Grex also offers basic internet services for free. Users can send >and receive E-mail, access the web through a non-graphical browser and >put text-only pages up on the web. Grex currently supports over 18,000 >users from all over the world. My quote can be used to get back on the subject of the new computer: >According to Jan Wolter, the president of the Board for Cyberspace >communications, "The new computer and the new Internet connection mean >that for the first time in a long time our system isn't straining to >support all the people using it. It just works better than it ever has >before, so we can now welcome new people users to a system that can >readily handle more users." Cut the last sentance about software upgrades and the downbeat stuff about the old system. Also cut McNally's praise of the staff (it's not that interesting to the outsider). Steve's quote is upbeat and fits in here. I added the exclamation point: >Grex volunteer Steve Weiss says "A lot of people raised a lot of money to >buy the hardware. They deserve the most thanks. It was not cheap, but the >power of this new configuration is exhilarating. Pedal to the metal!" Enough about the new computer already, back to the hype. I've shortened my quote because the end is redundant with things other people have said. >"For me Grex is a just a great sampler of different people of all ages, >from all walks of life, from Ann Arbor and around the world," says Jan >Wolter. "In most normal social situations I seem always to be talking >to people who are about the same age as me, have about the same job as >me, and do about the same things as me. Grex gives me a chance to talk >to a much broader range of people on a much broader range of subjects. >Some of them have gotten to be extremely good friends, some of them will >never be, but all have helped enrich my life. At the same time, I see >Grex as a kind of noble cause. We let anyone use our computer, no >questions asked. We give away basic access to the net. We help people >learn how to use all this new technology. We run the whole show >democratically and cooperatively. All the work is done by volunteers. >It's all funded from the grass roots, not from any corporate or >government sponsorship. It's refreshing to be a part of something so >fundamentally generous in nature." > >Long time Grex user Mary Remmers says that "through interactions with a >diverse community you tend to get the chance to share and challenge some >strongly held points of views. Grex is a learning experience. It is a >tolerance builder." I'd cut Sindi's comments about AOL and Arbornet. We are three different systems, not really in competition with each other. I'd expand the contact information, since this is important. >You can connect your computer to Grex in any of three ways. If you are in >the Ann Arbor area, you can use a modem communications program to dial >(734) 761-3000. Login a "newuser" to open a free account. If you have >internet access and a telnet program, then you can telnet to >"cyberspace.org". Again, login a "newuser" to open a free account. >If you have a web browser, point it at "http://www.cyberspace.org". I tried to talk about the different ways to connect separately. I also omitted the 8N1 setting - that is the default on most programs and about the only thing anyone ever uses these days. 8E1 required mention. 8N1 just confuses people.
Para 1: too many "justs". Use "has" for the second one. Para 2: "anyone" is better than "everyone". The "up" in "up on" is not needed. Para 3: type - capitalize "Communicatiions". "..first time *since <date>*..we can.." would avoid repeating 'time'. "..welcome new people users.."? Couple of other typos, which will be caught on a final run-through....
If there is no objection to the accumulated recommended change, can we see the revised release posted in toto?
Absolutely -- as soon as I can get my computer to talk to my ISP and can download it to my new computer. (And find a way to get Word onto my new computer. My copy is an upgrade -- which I am entitled tom\, but which was installed in a bundle on one of my previous computers, so I don't have access to the files I need to run the upgrade.) (Computers are almost as much hassle as they are a help...)
Here we go -- please note that we need an approximate date for our previous upgrade in para:3 For Immediate Release Local Conferencing System Picks Up Speed Ann Arbor, Michigan --- April 22, 1998 One of the oldest public access sites on the Internet just got a lot faster. Grex, an Ann Arbor based conferencing system and virtual community, has completed a year-long project to upgrade to a faster computer. Grex is a small non-profit organization, operated entirely by volunteer labor and supported solely by donations from the general public. All Grex services are free of charge and available to anyone. Grex offers users a wide range of tools to communicate with each other, including online conversations in over 100 topical conferences areas and several real-time chat areas. Grex also offers basic Internet services for free. Users can send and receive E-mail, access the web through a non-graphical browser and put text-only pages on the web. Grex currently supports over 18,000 users from all over the world. According to Jan Wolter, the president of the Board for Cyberspace Communications, "The new computer and the new Internet connection mean that for the first time since our last upgrade in (date) our system isn't straining to support all the people using it. It just works better than it ever has before, so we can now welcome new people users to a system that can readily handle more users." Grex volunteer Steve Weiss says, "A lot of people raised a lot of money to buy the hardware. They deserve the most thanks. It was not cheap, but the power of this new configuration is exhilarating. Pedal to the metal!" "For me Grex is a just a great sampler of different people of all ages, from all walks of life, from Ann Arbor and around the world," says Jan Wolter. "In most normal social situations I seem always to be talking to people who are about the same age as me, have about the same job as me, and do about the same things as me. Grex gives me a chance to talk to a much broader range of people on a much broader range of subjects. Some of them have gotten to be extremely good friends, some of them will never be, but all have helped enrich my life. At the same time, I see Grex as a kind of noble cause. We let anyone use our computer, no questions asked. We give away basic access to the net. We help people learn how to use all this new technology. We run the whole show democratically and cooperatively. All the work is done by volunteers. It's all funded from the grass roots, not from any corporate or government sponsorship. It's refreshing to be a part of something so fundamentally generous in nature." Long time Grex user Mary Remmers says that "through interactions with a diverse community you tend to get the chance to share and challenge some strongly held points of views. Grex is a learning experience. It is a tolerance builder." You can connect your computer to Grex in any of three ways. 7 If you are in the Ann Arbor area, you can use a modem communications program to dial (734) 761-3000. Login a "newuser" to open a free account. 7 If you have Internet access and a telnet program, then you can telnet to "cyberspace.org". Again, login as "newuser" to open a free account. 7 If you have a web browser, point it at "http://www.cyberspace.org".
Looks good. I saw one typo - an extra "a" - search for "a just a" to find it. Oh, and all the methods of connecting to Grex are number 7. :)
Oops -- those were supposed to be bullets. Guess Grex read 'em differently than my PC did.
...so we can now welcome new people users to a system... (end of second paragraph) Strike 'users' Looks great!
Glad you caught that.
How quickly can this be issued? After all, it is a *news* release....8-)
Shouldn't we put the contact methods near the begining since someone said they prune violently from the bottom up?
They belong at the end. I think we can trust them to prune with modest intelligence.
I hope this isn't too late, but in graf 2, janc is called the Pres of Bd of Cyb. Comm, but, again, what relation that is to Grex is left out. There, or before, the fact that CCI owns the computers on which Grex exists should be mentioned, methinks.
Grex is not a separate organization. Cyberspace Communications, Inc., is the official legal name of the corporation that is the whole shebang. "grex" is the name of the computer that is used to provide the service. If there's a question about what, exactly, is what, then there should be a section "definitions" that says what we mean by X, Y, and Z. If there's a word (like "grex") that could be confusing, and there's some other set of words (such as "Cyberspace Communications, Inc.") that would be less confusing, then it would make sense to just replace all occurrences of that confusing word with the less confusing phrase.
No, Grex is not an organization at all. Grex is a community, and the means by which the members of CCI meet, organize, and conduct much of their business. *shrug* In any case, at the place mentioned, CCI is an undefined quantity in the "story".
Did the release go out yet?
Yup. Nothing happened. Drat.
OTOH, I saw Grex' ad on Cable 11 yesterday. Nice!
You have several choices: