<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 2:27 PM, Ron Nossaman <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:rnossaman@cox.net" target="_blank">rnossaman@cox.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>On 2/27/2013 3:10 PM, Paul McCloud wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
And if it's only $50/mo. plus volunteers, what in<br>
the world is the problem with having both HL and the old system<br>
running side by side?<br>
</blockquote>
<br></div>
As I've said, the only thing that connects for me is that it's a personal vendetta of some sort, or somehow threatens someone's self image. It's something petty and glandular.</blockquote><div><br></div><div>
I've hesitated to bring it up, because I'm afraid people will take it the wrong way, but people keep asking, so I'll add my 2¢. It makes perfect sense to shut down the current pianotech and move it to HL. It's what I might do were I running PTG info-tech, though I hope I would perform better in the execution.<br>
<br>The reason is eyeballs and clicks. That's the modern currency. Which, as Apple, Google, and Facebook have proven, translates directly, and rapidly, into old world currency. So if you've got this valuable resource like the pianotech archives, and all these people freely contributing content to it on an ongoing basis, and it's on your server that you control, why would you <i>not</i> leverage that toward the goals of your larger organization? And in the PTG's case, some of the goals are to promote RPTs, the piano trade, etc. Reaching these goals is partly aided by being an information resource and piano authority on the web.<br>
</div><div><br></div><div>But it doesn't accrue benefits to your organization unless the expertise and resources are branded. So the discussion needs to be performed under the PTG moniker. How do you do this? Well the low-tech way is to modify the Mailman templates so it appends the little footers to each email with your branding info, as all Yahoo Groups members are aware: they started as little two-liner ads at the bottom of each email that filters through their group servers, and has expanded such that the advertising takes up most of the screen and you have to look for the message (ok, maybe not that bad, but you understand).<br>
<br></div><div>So if you're not quite deft with the tech expertise, you might say you're going to "move" your mailing list to another forum where you could put the PTG banner on the top of each message delivery, and make it so that each message is accompanied by the appropriate set of links to drive traffic back to your web site. Web site traffic, in the form of impressions and clicks, are the lifeblood of any entity wishing to make a mark on the web, because through them are your goals achieved.<br>
<br></div><div>If I am correct, then <a href="http://my.ptg.org">my.ptg.org</a> may still achieve these goals, because it puts some social media under the PTG brand, beyond just a normal web site. I don't like the software, so I have trouble seeing it happening, but I'm just a computer geek, and besides, nobody saw Apple coming back in the early 2000's so wild stuff happens in tech. But this also means I don't assign evil motives to those who think this is a reasonable thing to try to do for the larger PTG.<br>
<br>Jim<br><br><br></div></div></div></div>