SSE Yearbook, no longer to be printed?
Updated: see below
I remain extremely passionate about the Seed Savers Exchange. If you haven’t heard of SSE, please take the time to visit their web site and purchase a membership. The membership gives access to multiple publications as well as the incredible seed and plant resources of its members. http://www.seedsavers.org/
Last week I received my Yearbook. This is an event that I patiently wait for starting in December. I start looking through last years yearbook. I think about the members, what new varieties I want to grow, etc.. The yearbook, usually contains minor updates on the organization. This year, there was a fairly detailed note, describing their intent on now longer printing the yearbook. I have concerns about this transition and I voiced them in the following email. I would love to hear any other members or non-members feelings on this matter.
Received my Yearbook last week and was a little concerned about the comments inside. Seed Savers is suggesting that they will discontinue the yearbook in printed form by the end of the year. My personal feeling is that you will find many people resistant to this. Most all of the members I have dealt with directly, didn’t even have email addresses. I don’t know what percentage have email addresses listed in the yearbook, but my guess is that it is fairly low. I am a technology professional and I would still prefer a printed form. A choice for members would be a better option. I applaud that the yearbook was online this year before I even received the printed form, but I still love the printed book. Some thoughts.
1. Make it optional. This is quite common for other publishers.
2. Online yearbook will need to contain all of the information currently in the printed form. This means that it would need to be a membership login area, so that we could query by member etc.. I often will try to consolidate my requests to the fewest members.
3. On a topic outside of the year: I would love to see recorded videos of the events. In this day of YouTube and other online video communities, it could be a way to publicize our organization and at the same time disseminate information to its members. For example, in April SSE is hosting a grafting seminar. This would be an ideal subject to film and make available to members. I am confident many members such as myself would love to come to Iowa but cost considerations for a long journey make it unreasonable.
Update: Steph from Seed Savers has stated that the yearbook will be online in 2010 and they are still going to continue a printed copy. She stated that it will be up to the individual members to decide their format of yearbook.