We’ve received a ton of great feedback (very encouraging feedback, in fact), which tells us that the “Web 2.0” version is quite popular among our 10,000 or so Brigada participants. However, we also received multiple requests to still bundle the text of our items along with the emailed “table of contents” (TOC) message.
So that’s exactly what we’ll do!
Take note — with this edition of Brigada we officially switch to a *Sunday* publication date! Can you believe it? After publishing on Fridays for 13 years? Sundays will work better with the infrastructure we’re building at the https://brigada.org/ site. After all, Sundays are the first day in the week! :-) Forgive any inconvenience with the switch in publication dates!
Here’s the Table of Contents for the May 4th issue:
- Two Great Mission Books!
- Coaching Training For Church Multiplication
- Strategy Coordinators Needed for SE Asia
- Learn TESL in Palawan
- Missionary Training Camp by Elijah Company
- Who Will Pick up the Call for Mobilization in This…
- Be Discipled To Reach The Nations
- Great Summary Page on Cyclone Nargis
- International Water Missions Training, Oct 9-11
- The Backpage: Who will Cast a Vision
- Give Brigada a Lift!
- Click here to Give Wings (support) to Brigada
How did this get to be the May 4th edition? Did I hit the wrong url?
Harold Stukes
Uhmmmm [blush] nope. Just means I’m a bit behind. Sorry about that.
But we have this … *principle* that causes us to refuse to skip a single week’s labeled date, meaning that sometimes you’ll get a May 4th edition on July 4th. I always joke that if we had the money to hire some additional staffing hours, we could do better. :-)
Doug
The new format looks good and is easy to use. As usual, you have done a great job Doug. Thanks for continuing to serve us. – Greg Fritz
[glow] :-)
Doug, The new approach looks pretty on the web but is a complete mess for me via Email. Layout all over the place and URLs inserted left, right and centre.
The old, Email Brigada was easy to use and served us well. I feel the new blog-style is extra hassle, tough to read the Email and extra effort in going off to a website to read everything.
The ability to comment is good but, at the moment, I’m waiting to see whether I should stay signed up for the Emails :( Sorry to have rather more negative comment than others who have welcomed the changes.
Andrew
Hi Andrew. Well you raise good points — the very points that caused us to fight the urge to switch … for *years*. But at the same time, I would encourage you to be patient and give it some time during the transition. In yesterday’s emails, those subscribed via the *Googlegroup* were elated. Every picture, every piece of text seems to have come off rather well. The YahooGroup didn’t fare so well. Based on your feedback I’d be willing to be you receive your brigadas through YahooGroups.
Either way, rest assured — we will not stop until we get the bugs worked out. I’m not going to be satisfied until every detail is resolved.
It *is* extra trouble, but … for example… take a look at the new power we have through the “tags” at the website. We’ve wanted that kind of potential for *years*… and to think that this early in the transition process, we’re seeing the payoff this quickly — is well beyond our hopes. Getting the emails worked out is actually kid-stuff, comparatively. We can always just offer a text-only email (exactly like we have for 13 years) without a problem.
But in the end, we respect your decision to approach it however you need to approach it. We’re just trying to not sit around and let the “web 2.0” initiatives pass us by.
Thanks for your feedback.
Doug
RSS Feeds would also be an improvement!
RSS — is that kind of the same as “atom” feeds? Sorry I’m new to RSS/Atom both.
Doug
Yes, I’m a Yahoo user… I’ll take a look at the Google option…
All that said, I get other Yahoo! stuff with different groups that all arrive nicely formatted and easy to follow. All to do with Enhanced Features. But they’re switched on and, like you, the Brigada message is all untidy. But thanks for changing delivery (as announced in the current edition).
As for RSS… I didn’t ask but the answer is they are different approaches to a similar problem. ATOM was developed because some folk were unhappy with RSS. Wikipedia is helpful…
Andrew
Hi Andrew. The other YahooGroup editors must either know more about formatting HTML-ready emails (which is likely :-) ) or their YahooGroup has other options — because I’ve searched the Brigada-Today Yahoo Group without finding a single switch to throw that might help us. So unless I can find something new, I’m defaulting to this solution of:
YahooGroups.com for text-only
GoogleGroups.com for HTML
Doug