Very soon, sitedad is going to retreat to the in-laws to celebrate the season. This undisclosed locale has better weather and spotty internet access, so I will probably not be online my usual 8-10 hours a day for the next week or so. Be patient regarding approvals, and don’t expect any new news around here. In the meantime, I thought I’d leave folks with a little bit of holiday entertainment and some food for thought for EMUTalk.org enthusiasts.
I did a search on YouTube this morning for “EMU Christmas,” and I came up with a link to a band called Relient K singing a Christmas song at the EMU convocation center last year. Unfortunately, the embed feature was disabled for some reason, so you’ll have to follow the link.
And for a more, um “abstract” Christmas song, check out this remix by DJ CLown, which won Total Recut Remix contest for 2008:
Along the lines of warped Christmas songs, let em also share this small bit of video sent to me by a colleague via Facebook about the Jolly Boots of Doom:
Anyway, while watching these videos and enjoying your own holidaze, I would be curious to hear any comments about the direction of EMUTalk.org– sort of a state of the blog, so to speak. I’m planning a visual overhaul of the site, hopefully early in the year, but realistically, it might take longer. But beyond that, I’m wondering once again about opening the door to more posters.
Basically, I am beginning to think that it might be time to re-open the doors to posters other than me to EMUTalk.org. Might– I have some ideas, but I’m curious to hear what folks here might think.
On the one hand, I don’t want to return to the way things were. My goal way back when was for EMUTalk.org to be a forum where lots and lots of different writers could post their views. What ended up happening though was that a few very persistent and loud voices drowned out and/or scared others off. And by the way, I say this with love and respect for the likes of Mark Higbee and Abby Coykendall: I don’t think they were intending to do harm, and they both brought a lot of attention to important issues. I just thought it got to a point where their tenacity and forcefulness in their writing and their ideas took up too much space.
On the other hand, the hopes I had for getting more and different people involved in EMUTalk.org have been lukewarm at best. No one has taken me up on my suggestion that they start their own blogs and let me know so I could link to it, and only a handful of people have emailed me items to run on EMUTalk.org– though there have been some really good items passed along to me that way. So it’s getting a little lonely around here with just me doing the posting, and it is getting away from one of the goals of EMUTalk.org in the first place: it feels less like a community place and more like a sitedad blog.
So I guess the thing I am contemplating and asking for opinions and advice about is where to go next. Returning to the past is not really an option, but what sorts of ideas or thoughts do folks have about opening up posting options a bit more? Is there anybody reading this who wants to become a regular EMUTalk.org blogger/poster/contributor? Do people just like it the way that it is? Anybody got a better idea?
Just some questions to contemplate over the holiday cheer. Feel free to discuss; again, I’ll approve new comments when I can. And I’ll be back next week.
Steve— I’ve regularly read EMUTalk nearly from the start. I found the site much more compelling when Mark Higbee, Abby C and a few others commented often on campus issues. Yes, some posts from other bloggers were useless in my view, such as the ones that repeated the same conspiracy themes. But better to have some of that than the situation for the last year or more. The site is now so bland I don’t find it as informative about campus politics. Hope others give you their reactions. Thanks for your big effort to keep EMUTalk going; hope you let it return to the central role it used to fulfill.
Michael, I moved your comment from the “contact” part of things to here– I hope that’s okay.
I agree with you to an extent. But I think that some folks went just a little too far, and a number of people have told me that they found this intimidating. I guess what I’m wondering is how to keep “the good” without dealing with “the bad.” Is it a situation where we kind of have to take “the bad” with “the good?” Or is there a different way to set this up? I literally don’t know, which is one of the reasons why I’m throwing this out here for folks to discuss.
Oh, and I also think EMUTalk.org has been more “boring” because stuff on campus in general has been more boring– and in a good way. I mean, no contentious contract negotiations, no murder cover-ups, no email screw-ups, etc. The only “exciting” thing to happen around here as of late has been the religious demonstrations in front of the library, and that was pretty mild.
I’m fairly new to EMUTalk.org, so I have no real preference between old vs new, but I can tell you that myself and business partners get a lot of our information regarding what’s happening around EMU’s campus from here.
Publishing monthly, emYOU! The Magazine, it’s often difficult to keep information up to date and time relevant. I’m not a “blogger” per say, but to keep things current, I’ve started a blog at emyouthemagazine.blogspot.com where I try to talk to students directly. Like I said, I’m still very “green” when it comes to all aspects of blogs, but I feel you do a tremendous service for the EMU community in keeping us all informed. I look forward to being more of an active participant with EMUTalk.org in the future! Have a wonderful break and thanks!
“On the other hand, the hopes I had for getting more and different people involved in EMUTalk.org have been lukewarm at best. No one has taken me up on my suggestion that they start their own blogs and let me know so I could link to it, and only a handful of people have emailed me items to run on EMUTalk.org– though there have been some really good items passed along to me that way. ”
Well.. I’ve posted anything here in months due to mostly the Stock Market 2008 being as horrid as it was. Thankfully, I stuck with it and doing much better now.
Otherwise I WOULD have done a blog and perhaps tried to get more people involved and started an investment account of some type for EMU’s benefit and etc.
But… That will have to wait a little longer…
I think next year should be the year I get off my butt and put my money where my mouth is and help EMU out a bit.
But, crud… That all depends on whether EMU has changed for the better with new leadership or not.
Don’t lose hope cause emutalk.org is an excellent idea that was ahead of its time.
P.S. I do run a Stocks Blog off of http://www.fool.com….username: Varchild.
I’ll discuss my EMU => Stocks idea off that blog and announce when the charitable investment account is up and running for EMU.