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Important new stuff
If you´re a community organizer type person working on developing Y2k initiatives in your area, there´s an important resource you need to visit. Follow this link to the Center for Y2k & Society. These are folks who are building a resource base on the national level that you may be able to take advantage of.
Who are you?
We´re leaders from various public and private organizations that are working on Y2k community preparations in the Twin Cities metro area. There are folks from various cities (St. Paul, Minneapolis and others), leaders from the church community, business type people, nonprofit and foundation leaders, neighborhood leaders -- all who share the goal of preparing the Twin Cities for a possible Y2k disruption. No, we´re not saying there will be a disruption, we´re saying it´s prudent to prepare communities in case there´s a disruption. If you are looking for a prediction of what will happen, you´ll have to look elsewhere.
This is a group with which we can share ideas to "take back home" to aid us in the organizing we´re doing. So the way to describe us is "there is no `there´ there." This isn´t an official group, or sponsored by anybody -- it´s just a place to help those of us who are official/sponsored type people be more effective in the Y2k organizing we´re doing.
Click here, or on the "Members" button on the left side of this page, if you like to see a list of the people that are in the gang (gaggle..).
What´s your approach?
Here´s the list of things that we usually talk through with people when we´re trying to introduce ourselves;
About Y2k and community preparation:
Y2k impacts could be severe, but we won´t really know what´s coming until it´s too late to prepare.
Given that we don´t know what´s going to happen, and that we´re in a high-risk zone, getting ready is the prudent thing to do.
Our community benefits from these preparations even if we don´t need them for Y2k.
Our objectives are to; minimize the impact of Y2k, broaden the base of resources available throughout our towns, and be as flexible and effective as we can in responding to whatever Y2k problems may arise.
About our group:
We are leaders -- we all are already taking an active Y2k community preparation role. We´re not a "community preparation group," rather, we each lead an effort of some kind.
We come from all sectors. We represent nonprofits, communities of faith, cities, neighborhoods, businesses. We´re about the job of broadening the links across sectors.
We are Twin Cities based folks (at least for the moment), mostly by accident rather than design. Since we have no sponsor, nor do we have any real resources, we´re pretty much limited to people who can easily get to our face-to-face meetings.
What are you doing?
We are meeting (right now we get together about every 3 weeks)
We are sharing an email list
We are putting helpful stuff up on this web site, so we can share our ideas with each other
Can I join?
Sure, but you may get a little frustrated with us if your interest is in the "doing." We´re more about the figuring out how to do the doing, rather than the actual heavy lifting. If you´re the leader of a group that´s working on community preparation in the Twin Cities area, this is the place for you. If you want to join a group that´s working on community preparation, you may want to send a message to our email list (y2kprep@gathering.place.com), describe a little about yourself and your interests, and we´ll try to hook you up with one of our projects. Please, don´t send commercials for your Y2k products to this list -- we take a dim view of that sort of thing and it will set your cause back if you do.
Joining the email list is easy. Go to the signup web page for the Y2KPrep email list, put in your email address and you´ll be on the list. There will be a delay because I am "approving" additions to the list right now, mostly to keep track of how big the list is getting. From that point you can; "listen in" on our conversation, join the conversation via email, and find out when and where we´ll be meeting. The rest is up to you.
What´s on this site?
The "subsections" of this page will be useful gizmos that we´re sharing with each other. I, your trusty web admin type guy, will try to make the headings as clear as possible, but your best bet is to surf through the stuff. If you find anything that is useful to your effort, you are free to take the materials and use them. Don´t wait for permission, just do it. This is "Y2k time" (kinda like "Internet time" only faster) so don´t be waiting around standing on ceremony.
How can I get some stuff added to this site?
Contact me, your faithful wonder-dog Mike. I´ll get the goodies up on this site for ya. The only quirk I have is that I will edit the submissions, and won´t put anything commerical up on this machine. So, no links to money-making URL´s please.
Mike O'Connor
Box 8097
St. Paul, MN 55108
651-647-6109
Mike@haven.com
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