Theos-Talk Archives (September 1993 Message tl00013)

Hi Everyone:

This posting is from Don to the list.

I had a really interesting evening last night and I thought I'd share
it with the list memebers.

It turns out that Rilla Muldoon, who is the sysop on the New Age forum
on CompuServe, lives in Grand Rapids MI. Me, I live in Detroit, so we
arranged a meeting in Ann Arbor.

Kathy and I met Rilla, her husband and two boys, along with two other
couples who frequent the New Age forum.  It was quite an interesting
evening.  We had an Ethiopian dinner at the Blue Nile restaurant and
then checked out a couple Ann Arbor New Age bookstores and ended up in a
coffe house.

A couple of really interesting things came out of the meeting.

First, I got a lot of interesting "behind the scences" information about
compuserve. One thing I learned is that the various forums on CServe
are, basically, subcontracted out. That is to say, people own the forums
and CompuServe essentially "rents space" to the forum owners. The owners
make a profit from the forums based on their user attendance and then
the owner splits the profits with Compuserve corporation. Interesting
arrangement!

Another interesting aspect of the evening is that one of the couples
who showed up, Patty and Bill Rayl, are publishers of Connect Magazine.
Connect is a newer magazine that focuses on BBS and internet activity
and has articles about using internet, and about computer
telecommunication in general.  Well, I asked Patty if they advertise new
internet mail lists in their magazine and she said that yes they do
announce new lists.  As well, her husband Bill explained that there is
a specific UseNet newsgroup devoted exclusively to announcing new
mailing lists.

So, whenever we formally decide to advertise the list, I can contact
Bill and Patty and get an announcement put in their magazine, and Bill
said he would put the announcement in the Usenet group for us.

So, just give me the word and I'll contact Bill and Patty and have them
do their thing.

I thought that was very cool of them.

Also, another interesting tidbit that came up was that Rilla and I were
talking and *she* expressed an interest in starting a Theosophy section
with in the New Age forum.

Now, I remember that sometime back, John Mead contacted CompuServe about
starting a theosophy forum. I discussed this with Rilla and she thought
it was a pretty untenable idea given the way CompuServe does its
buisness.  However, she was very gun ho about starting a Theosophy
section in the New Age forum.

I think this would be a nice place for theosophy to get situated in
cyberspace. I didn't realize this, but Rilla explained that the New Age
forum on CompuServe is one of CompuServe's biggest money makers. Rilla
said that the New Age forum is one of the most sucessful nontechie
forums on CompuServe.

Now, what this translates to for compuserve is $$$. What this translates
to for theosophy is exposure. Presently, thesosophy exists under the
"Esoteric Societies" section in the New Age Froum, along with Golden
Dawn, and a number of other occult type societies. Personally, I think
it would be a great idea to establish a base of operations on
CompuServe.

We would have our own archive there. We could use it as a place for
announcing events, ect.

A Theosophy section in the New Age forum on Compuserve would not
substitute this internet list we have, but it would supplement it
considerably.  Compuserve itself is quite a cyberspace center and to
be located their, again, would be excellent exposure.

So, please, list members, let me know your feelings about this,
especially the list members who have compuserve accounts.

So, those are the highlights of last night that are relevant to what we
are doing around here. All in all it was agreat night. We had tons of
fun and got some buisness done too.

So, talk to you all soon.

All my best,
Don