Whatcha Think?
by Dave Pratt
Velocissima Editor
As we enter the second year of the millennium (or the first, depending on your point of view), there’s increasing pressure for our club to keep up with the times. One thing this means is the concept of publishing Velocissima electronically. This has been a topic of discussion at every meeting of your Board of Directors for the past couple of years, including the most recent one on November 4.
The advantages of electronic publishing are manifold (appropriate wording for a car club, eh?): Everything can be in color; we wouldn’t be limited to a fixed number of pages; late-breaking news, changes, corrections, and updates can be added instantaneously; back issues are always available; the contents are searchable, etc., etc. But the biggest incentive for going electronic is cost! Despite every effort to keep our costs to a minimum, two thirds of your club’s budget currently goes to printing and mailing Velocissima Think of what we could accomplish if those funds were available for use in other activities!
As most of you know, every bit of every issue of Velocissima is now available online right here on our web site. In fact, there’s always more here than we can fit in the printed version! Web-based publishing is becoming an accepted standard. Many members have already asked me to stop mailing Velocissima to them, since they prefer to view it at our web site, and to save the club money. Separating online members from print-and-mail members is an extra effort, but we now feel that it’s worth it.
Realizing that not quite all of our members are internet-connected yet, we’ve thus far resisted the push to go completely electronic. But times are a-changin’, and we want to know what you think! We are currently offering Velocissima two ways: the online version that you're reading, and printed and mailed as usual. We are asking each and every one of you to tell us which way you’d prefer via a simple online form or via the mail-in form in the January issue of the newsletter. Please submit the form ASAP! There’s a place for your suggestions and comments as well. It’s very important that we hear from you about this topic—it affects how you’ll be seeing and hearing from AONE into the future!
The extremes of the issue are easy to summarize: We could keep printing monthly newsletters as we’re doing now, or we could abandon printing and go completely electronic. There are some in-between positions that have been suggested as well, such as going to quarterly printed newsletters, or quarterly newsletters with small (single-sheet or postcard) mailings in between. We might also be able to provide Velocissima to you as Adobe Acrobat PDF files, sent to you monthly via email that you can view, and print if you choose. Let us know what you think!
A note about our advertisers: If we were to stop printing Velocissima monthly, you’d start seeing the ads from our supporting advertisers appearing throughout the pages of the monthly issues on our web site, just as they appear in the newsletter. Even though we might be phasing out Velocissima in print, we expect that our advertisers would be very happy about this, since velocissima.com is now averaging well over 40 hits per day, and can be seen by members and non-members alike!
So help us decide what to do! Submit
the form and tell us how you like receiving Velocissima now! 