[Ccil-user] CCIL Crisis

[daved@ccil.org]

Having been out of the day-to-day activity of CCIL for many,
many years, I do not have a whole lot to offer at this point.  
I fear that perhaps the call for help is a little late coming.

Most of you do not know me.  I was one of the early members at
CCIL and I held many volunteer positions for a few years.  At that
time, while not thriving, we were growing and having fun time
building a community out of CCIL.

My original involvement with CCIL occurred when I suggested that
CCIL needed a way to regularly communicate with it's members.  So 
much was being done by many volunteers and most of it was going
unnoticed by the vast majority of members.  My suggestion, to 
Jordan Siedel (one of the founders), was to create a virtual 
newspaper that would be e-mailed regularly to the membership.

I learned something that day from Jordan.  His response to me
was, "Go ahead and do it."  He empowered me to do it.  What a great
way of getting volunteers.  (I myself have used this method many times
since.)

This started what I think was my greatest contribution, "CCIL News". 
It wasn't a particularly fancy title, but for a period of about (I 
think) a year it was a monthly publication that highlighted the
latest developments on CCIL.  Included were member profiles, tutorials
on using some of the tools available on CCIL, reports from other
volunteers, what new technical features were being installed, a calendar
of upcoming events to name a few.  A lot of the material was written 
by myself, but much was contributed by others.

(I had hoped to point you to past issues, but alas, I couldn't find
them anymore.  If anyone knows where they are located, please 
post their location.)

Editing the CCIL News became a labor of love for me, but as I assumed 
other duties at CCIL I passed it's future on to others.

I mention all of this for a reason.  For all the fine work that CCIL
has done in the past few years, very few members were informed about 
it.  As evidenced by the recent postings about CCIL's crisis, many 
members haven't had a clue about what was going on at CCIL... one 
member even felt that CCIL's funding came from some other community
service organization.

In order for people to volunteer and contribute they need to be kept 
aware of what is going on and how they can best help.  It needs to 
be a frequent message that points out the successes and even the 
failures.  

If CCIL ceases to exist, it will be quite a shame.  CCIL has done 
some great work, most of it without proper recognition.  I extend my
compliments to all those that have volunteered their time and efforts
to CCIL going.

I sincerely hope that CCIL is able to weather this storm and continue
to survive.

Dave Doligalski
daved@ccil.org


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