2008: 1st QuarterThe UBtheNEWS project, which was launched in January 2007, is now into its second year of operation! Below is a summary of the accomplishments of the 1st Quarter and Initiation-to-date accomplishments. Quantitatively speaking:
Qualitatively Speaking: Several major (and wonderful) transitions occurred in the first quarter of the second year of the UBtheNEWS project. Notwithstanding that the UBtheNEWS has never been and was never designed to be Halbert’s one-man road show, the first quarter of the second year is marked by a significantly increased amount of participation. Joe DiMaggio, the new webmaster for UBtheNEWS is very generously doing all the work of webmastering as a free service to the project. This equates to a contribution worth many thousands of dollars per year! Several new additions to the website, in particular, getting things set up to post all of Chris Halvorson’s study group videos, means that Joe’s contribution is likely going to have a value in the $10,000 per year range. Chris Halvorson significantly stepped up his contribution regarding the preparation of reports. Chris has been very helpful all along, but this year marked a real turning point. He meticulously went over about half the reports and helped to create major upgrades to numerous reports. Though his continued contribution to the UBtheNEWS project is going to be more particularly addressed in the next quarterly report, this quarter is the one that really marks the transition towards integrating him much more fully into the project. Kristen Michaels and Eric Schaveland have been producing incredible videos of Chris’ study groups for over a year now. This backlog of educational resource is going to be posted along with all the future study groups. To facilitate making these videos ready for posting both on the website (with higher resolution) and on YouTube (in a more compressed format), Mike DiMattia has generously offered his professional production services. Mike has agreed to make five-minute “thumbnail” highlights of each study group so that people can get a little taste of the gems from each one! The Contributors List was reformatted to allow more specific mention of the various ways that people contribute. Now you can click on a name to find out more about how that person is helping out with the project. A review of the Trail Tales from the end of January and beginning of February will provide details on the wonderful success achieved with initial in-roads regarding university outreach. These pilot projects for doing direct outreach at universities convinced me that it is time to start focusing a lot of my attention on doing direct outreach and less on study group presentations. Developing the UBtheNEWS project to the point where it is now possible to capture the attention of professors and researchers marks one of the most dramatic shifts in the development of this project! Sponsored advertising was initiated on Yahoo search engines at the end of this quarter. Google is next. For ten cents a click hundreds of people have been directed to the UBtheNEWS site. Some of the top searches for attracting clicks are: ancient history, Mesopotamia, ancient civilizations, Hubble telescope, astronomy, continental drift, plate tectonics, and native Americans. Other direct outreach initiatives have also gone very well. I have an open invitation to do a second presentation at the Theosophical Society in Deerfield Beach. A second presentation was done in February at Capstone House, “the futuristic learning center.” This, like the first event, brought in seventeen attendees. Ann Garner was successful in setting up a presentation to about two-dozen people on the interfaith counsel at Thanks-Giving Square in downtown Dallas. And Susan Magilka, the music director at Unity Church in Oklahoma City, was instrumental in setting a presentation at her church. This turned out to be the largest presentation to date to non Urantia Book readers! Not surprisingly, the transition to doing direct outreach means contributions from doing study group presentations has declined significantly. This has led to the initiation of an email list that not only serves as a way to encourage support of the UBtheNEWS project (hint, hint), but also serves as a way to communicate more forward-looking ideas that are not suited for the Trail Tales section of the website. The presentation at the Celestial Nights Retreat, hosted by Mind, Body & Spirit, was the largest presentation to date. They also very graciously provided me a scholarship for the event. Bless their hearts. So all in all, it is fair to say that the second year of the UBtheNEWS project has started out extremely well and continues to show accelerated growth and development in all areas! |
