Wither Full Circle?

Newsletter: The January 05 newsletter went on-line today. It includes the notice about our search for a Co-Editor to work with Snakemoon.

Snakemoon and I spoke on the phone for about an hour yesterday. It's always a pleasure to talk with her - we get a lot of work done and we laugh a lot.

We both have a lot of plans for the newsletter (including a redesign of the website, using DreamWeaver). Most of these plans are subject to our schedules and those of the volunteer staff.

We'd like to implement the on-line questionnaires this year. Snakemoon wants to begin with questions about our reader's lives, values and politics. Should be interesting. I think that we have more conservative Pagan readers then she does. We'll see.

We also have a Pagan scholar (a Professor at Cal State Chico) who is doing research on our community for her next book, and she'd like to get into the act.

Right now, Snakemoon is working on a book for her work, and my schedule is as full as it can be. We both had a rough time of it in 2004. As a result of all this, we are each guarding our free time very, very carefully. Whatever we do in 2005 will require more capable volunteers and, possibly, the help of a new web designer.

We've both wanted to update the FCE Links pages, so that we have a standing record of sites & information we think is useful to our members. We've got hundreds of links to add, all valuable. The trouble is finding the time (and the help) to do that.

It's tempting to do more ourselves (as usual) since finding volunteers, interviewing, training, communicating and keeping standards high can be so darn time consuming....but that way lies madness.....and Burnout.

Sharing power isn't the problem. Finding people who will accept responsibility and meet deadlines, is.

Ad Revenue?: This weekend, I hope to install Google's AdSense on the FCE site - I've got a meeting with Captain Lightning about this on Saturday. If this works, it might pay for the website fees, which would be nice. This is a pilot program for Google, as well as for us.

Spiral Steps: Meanwhile, Dj is talking to the folks at the Santa Clara Spiral Steps meeting. They want to take a group conscious (their phrase) and vote on whether or not to make this an open meeting. Molly, the host, has OK'd this. Now it's up to the members as to whether or not they wish to take this chance.

Meanwhile, there's still the issue of The Witches' Ball.