Maurice Weitman on sat 3 apr 10
Greets, you all,
I haven't seen any new posts since this morning, so I'll try sending
this out to serve multiple purposes. Joyce, who has a life, might
not be around to pass our gems through the pipe or it may be down
again. We'll see if this makes it through.
As most of you may know, clayart had been off the air for a few days.
Its coma seemed to coincide with my departure for Philadelphia, but I
no longer take that personally.
It seems that ACerS neglected to renew our listserv license on time.
And it seems that it took much longer than an outsider such as myself
would have thought it should have taken to rectify that. I would
estimate that Joyce, Mel, and I called them twenty times or so with
little feedback. They must be really busy.
I had to leave NCECA early, missing the Tobin explosions, Friday's
program, and the clayart room festivities including the mug exchange.
By the time I got home, clayart was up and I got on with my life. In
checking some other emails I skipped while away, I found a little
ditty from Ceramic Arts Daily "Announcing the Ceramic Arts Daily
Community Forum."
For those of you who don't know, Ceramic Arts Daily is a daily email
from CeramicArtsDaily.org and "is produced by the Ceramic
Publications Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of The American
Ceramic Society" a.k.a. ACerS... the folks who (sometimes) bring you
clayart.
Now since I left early, I didn't hear anything from Mel or anyone
else about the "Ceramic Arts Daily Community Forum," but it does seem
that ACerS is putting some resources into a new direction. I hope
our recent outage isn't a sign of their decreased interest in clayart.
I had a great time in Philadelphia; the "Studio Pottery in 2010"
pre-NCECA conference was very informative and enjoyable... more about
that later. This NCECA was my first in three years and apart from
being able to commune with some fave claybuds, it wasn't my favorite
in terms of content. But I did make some new connections and got to
renew some older ones. A few great meals and lively discussions
were, as usual, very nourishing in all ways.
To those NCECAbuds to whom I didn't get to say good-bye, sorry I
didn't. I enjoyed being with you all. Among the highlights for me
was my time in the clayart room, hanging with my buds, and watching
ePriddy demo her brushing technique. Elizabeth was on opposite Terry
Gross's keynote shpiel, but a number of us got to watch a great
teacher and brusher at work. Thanks eP for being so good at
demystifying this and encouraging those lucky enough to witness her
demo.
Okay, more later.
Regards,
Maurice
marci and rex on sun 4 apr 10
At 10:04 PM 4/3/2010, Maurice Weitman wrote:
> I hope
>our recent outage isn't a sign of their decreased interest in clayart.
Hi maurice,
First of all, NCECA was fun for me this year. ...It was
great to be able to put faces to names.. ( and to see that Logan
and Snail really ARE girls LOL...)
It was also nice to have a great crowd at Pauls and my breakout
workshop on overglaze... The amount of people who showed
up shocked the hell out of both of us LOL !... of course, it did
help that one of the other NCECA presenters did one on chinapaint
on wood fired glazes.
Anyway :
Im probably opening a huge can of worms here.but:
Why is it necessary to have clayart tied to ACerS ? Its easy
to set up an independent mailing list ...
We run PPIO ( the chinapainters version of Clayart ) through a
hosting company called LFCHosting and it costs us about 30 bucks a
month which includes our website .... ... ( If everybody kicked
in a buck at the beginning of the year, we'd surely have more
than enough to run it ) ......
They have been extremely reliable for us.. We've used
them since 1998 and I dont remember them EVER being down
. We use it unmoderated .. but it could easily be set up
moderated just like the current version of Clayart is ..
We also have recently ( since November) set up a forum for our
members ' use... www.PPIOforum.com .... It is broken down into
categories for subjects and teacher classrooms and albums and
works hand in hand now with the list so that members
can post photos of their work or photos of things we
are discussing on the list... and this way ,its all in one nice
neat little place instead of scattered all over the net on different
websites... ( and its very easy to use.. You can load photos
directly from your computer without needing an interim site
like Flicker .... Hey , if we can get 85 year old white
haired chinapainters to use it, no reason that big , macho
woodfirers cant figure it out LOL ! .....) ... We are paying a
total cost of about $ 100 a year for various things for
the forum...mostly things like ad removal ... but it could easily
be free... ( just a little more annoying ) .......
So its a nice little one-two punch : thelist for discussions and
the forum for a permanent place for pictures and lessons
I dont mean to step in and suggest an overhaul .. but if
the status quo isnt working... or isnt working properly , maybe
its time to take our toys and go independent..? ...
Im willing to help with anything it takes.. Im unfortunately up
to my eyeballs in shows and seminars until after the first week of
June...but Im willing to do what I can in the meanwhile....
marci the chinapainter .....
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