Nice forum! An opening "toast" of sorts --
Well what I have been thinking and working on is creating a way to have users to assist gathering contacts for GridRepublic. Siimply using Google doc form, but later a more formal process may want to be looked into. This is just an idea helping to find the smaller organisations and businesses that initally aren't found by web searches.
Secondly a suggestion area for new and desired features would be a good idea to find out what people think. Possibly make a ranking ability by users for the suggestions and any of the project's displayed design additions. This may help with retaining and attracting users as well as helping with planning site development.
Re: gathering contacts -- what did you have in mind?
First, I should say that I think our LinkedIn page can be very powerful; if we can get a large number of people to connect to this, we will very quickly build up a network of contacts that will be invaluable. (Note that via LinkedIn, you can reach out not only to the people who connect to you, but also to all the people who connect to them, etc)
As for a more traditional list, how about something like this:
Re: Gathering Contacts --
I've revised the forms referred to in my previous post, to make it simpler for people to submit --
...I'm not sure if we should post the submissions in a public document as I did above, since we might ask for individual contact info, and publishing this in any fashion might make people less comfortable in sharing such info.
...Truth is, I'm not sure this is a big advantage over just providing an email address for this purpose.
What do you think?
Matt I think an email can work, but the form allows for organized responses.
Email submissions could vary in format and information. Where as the form could help in handling of the incoming data in the excel sheet. As the preformatted info could be copied and pasted to the list that we use as a master contact list of places.
The responses for the form can be shared just with those who need to see the info as to keep the submitters privacy.
Ok, Got y'all linked on my sailing site And my personal site. Take a look.
http://ravenclasssailing.org
http://hump.smugmug.com
Hope it helps!