Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: mailing lists

[Craig Ragland (cragland]

Songaia Cooperative (http://www.songaia.com) has decided, at least for the
time being, to NOT give out our mailing list for use in non-Songaian
purposes. We have not yet done any trading of lists with other groups and,
I believe, have turned down some "opportunities" to spread our list around
to other non-profity purposes.

I'm actually more interested in how electronic distribution lists can be
used than snail mail lists because of (1) the relative costs of each
medium, (2) the fact that with a e-mail list, I can just reference a
website address and the recipient can determine whether or not to take the
time to check us out and (3) the relative ecological cost of "junk mail."

The only real problem is that e-mail excludes people that are not "wired."
Eventually, I expect that I will have convinced all of Songaia to get
"wired," but I'm not going to hold my breath -- I'm just going to work out
the economics of having a high performance communications server and ISDN
connectivity for the whole community and then do a deal with my employer,
Questar Microsystems (http://www.questar.com) who offers the NetQuest (tm)
server-in-a-box product. We have yet to lay the communications
infrastructure for Songaia and I believe that there is a real deal to be
had by putting together a cooperative communications system (i.e. PBX) vs.
all of us having one-to-one relations with our local telephone company
(GTE).

cragland [at] questar.com
   is
Craig Ragland
Vice President of Internet Services
Questar Microsystems, Inc.
Land: (206) 487-2627 ext. 225
FAX:  (206) 487-9803