tidbyte2 18267 960101 TIDBYTES: Commentary by Susan King, Moderator +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ TIDBYTES: Commentary by Susan King, Moderator +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ A JewishGen InfoFile JewishGen Tidbytes - December 1995 (an expanded year end edition) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Realizing we have just completed our SECOND full year on the internet, this edition has been expanded to encompass year end accomplishments and what you might expect in 1996. There is a flurry of activity surrounding a number of projects... some will be mentioned here.. and some are in the works.. but are soon to be released. The announcements should be EXCITING. We were hoping to be able to announce more.. but with all good things... ... we have come to expect the unexpected. In the very near future you will have access to many new services and see enhancements to existing services. There will be a number of exciting SEARCH tools for both email and web based database engines. In fact, we just released the JOS last week... and have two handfuls.. count'em ten more to come in the coming weeks! Those of us involved can hardly keep up. We have, however, amassed an incredible team who are working on these projects as we speak and the numbers just continue to grow. It goes without saying, our accomplishments and future growth is being made possible by all of you who have voluntarily contributed both time and money to the JewishGen project over the years. Your contributions have and will continue to go to good use to expand the current services and add new services to this evergrowing family of Jewish Researchers. JewishGen has been a dream in the making for over 10 years now... it truly is alot of fun to share and today live this dream with so many people from so many places. Thanks to all for coming, staying, volunteering and making JewishGen what it is! As this year comes to a close, we will be re-thinking, re-tooling our leadership and making some changes once again in our management to maintain the growth of people and services we are experiencing. And with the addition of Joachim Mugdan and Michael Tobias, JewishGen has truly reached international proportions! In 1996, JewishGen will be functioning under the following ADVISORY BOARD: Susan E. King - Founder/Moderator Bernie Kouchel - JewishGen Manager - Special Projects Warren Blatt - JewishGen co-WEB Manager Gary Mokotoff - Advisor JewishGen will also be changing the complexion of the MOD_SQUAD to include the Advisory Board and all the current and future Project Leaders and Managers, serving more in the capacity of an Operational Group. CURRENT: Len Markowitz - Yizkor SIG Project Leader Jim Yarin - Grodno SIG Project Leader Steve Zedeck - REIPP SIG Project Leader Joachim Mugdan - Mentor Programme Project Leader Dan Leeson - Discussion Topic Leader NEW: Howard Gershen - co-WEB Manager (WEB Reb as he calls it) Michael Tobias - Email Search Engines and co-Web Manager We want to take this opportunity to thank Bruce Kahn for his service in a leadership role with JewishGen over the years. Bruce will be taking a "sabbatical" from his current leadership role to pursue his special interest, programming web searchable engines for the JewishGen Web Site. We hope that his involvement over the next 6 months will help bring more and more data to the Jewish Genealogical community, something we can all look forward to. Bruce along with several other newcomers will be working closely under the NEW Web Management team of Howard Gershen, Warren Blatt and Michael Tobias, to make this happen. JewishGen Web Site ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Well there isn't enough space to talk about this. The Web Site went up as a shell back in August. It vegetated for a while waiting for some volunteers to step forward to take on the work of managing the pages. And if you haven't looked at it recently, it is indeed going through a metamorphisis and evolving very quickly into a real "gem". And it will continue to evolve in what may be termed giant leaps over the coming months. The WEB site has just undergone a major overhaul over the last few weeks... to handle some new SEARCH and DATABASE engines which we are installing and planning to install within the coming weeks and months. The overhaul will be superficial to you the users, but we have negotiated with South Coast Computing (sccsi) to move our web site over to a new server to allow for SECURITY issues and HIGHEND software development/compiling requirements to handle the future plans. This new machine is designed as a workhorse and is the type used to support the banking institutions today. Additionally, our intent has been to work with a number of professional developers to provide professional engines which will meet the high demand and usage we expect. We will be putting our engines through rigorous real-time testing methodology to insure all the results are indeed accurate. Some special recognitions for some special effort... Len Kamlet is doing an exceptional job maintaining the Meetings Page. Check it out... JGS's all over the world have begun using this as a primary source to announce their upcoming meetings. If you know of or are planning any meetings with interest to the Jewish Genealogical Community, please email "meetings@jewishgen.org" with details. It would help if you would review the current page to get a template for adding your meeting announcement. We intend to have this automated within the coming weeks/months! Howard Gershen also put together an incredible LINKS page providing hundreds of links to other Jewish and Genealogical sites on the WEB. You should be able to get anywhere from here. If you come across a site which would have benefit to our readers, please email "links@jewishgen.org" with Site name, description and URL. Again, this may become automated as we move towards the next generation of our Web site development. Carol Lieberman has assumed the role of "ghost writer" for many of the Web pages and InfoFiles. Her background as a writer will help us rework our content so that it indeed makes sense especially those written by one of us.. . You should be noticing the changes on a monthly basis. Warren Blatt has been managing the InfoFiles page making sure they are transferred timely to the Web Site. Additionally, we have agreed to house the Boston Seminar pages. Warren and his volunteers are constantly expanding the information for the Boston Seminar so you will have access to latest and most up-to-date information. We hope to see you there! Additionally Warren's FAQ has been HTML'd by Bruce Kahn and the most up to date versions are added on the first of each month. We have also submitted our URL to most of the WEB URL databases used by many to locate sites based on keyword searches. If you happen across one which does not list JewishGen, please let us know by emailing "support@jewishgen.org". We have even added a GUEST Book on our WEB Site to increase the level of feedback and participation. We want to know what you like about JewishGen, and if you are willing to volunteer in certain areas. We are indeed interested in what you would like to see improved. We encourage everyone to have the opportunity to input into developing the future of JewishGen, the discussion group, the Sig Groups, the InfoFiles and the Web Site. If you aren't on the WEB... you can use the email address: "comments@jewishgen.org". At the same time we added counters on several pages so we can measure what our needs might be for the future. We are truly amazed at the number of hits we have received in these first few counting weeks. What also is also interesting is the number of NON-JewishGen readers who are finding us on the Web who have not been current readers or participants in the discussion group. This has indeed added some new dimension which makes the timing of the Mentor Programme much more valuable. MENTOR PROGRAMME ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We've been talking about it for months. Joachim Mugdan and volunteers have been putting considerable effort into designing The MENTOR Programme (otherwise known as the JewishGen College). This should prove to be an invaluable tool for both "newcomers" and "oldtimers" alike. I do not want to burst their bubble, but I can assure you the offerings are IMPRESSIVE and were worth waiting for. It has been a major effort in development for more than 8 months now. STAY TUNED to JewishGen and the MENTOR Programme page on the web site ... any day now. If what you see doesn't send "chills up your spine", then you are not as impressionable as I, but then what we've seen is indeed there... which means launch time is nigh! . Truly, an exciting way to start 1996! Please watch for announcements and signup instructions in the coming days. There will be posts to JewishGen, an InfoFile and of course a WEB page for this programme along with a host of other tools to help out in the Mentoring process. JGFF EMAIL SEARCH ENGINE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We recently released the latest and final revision (Number 8) to the general public about a month ago. The enhancements which include the Daitch-Mokotoff soundex were incorporated from the feedback we got from the beta testers. We certainly appreciated your assistance and comments so it could meet your needs. The instructions on using the current version can be retrieved by sending email To: jgff2@jewishen.org HELP ~~~~ Please make sure you use the correct spelling of the email address as well as the proper syntax for executing your search as listed in the documentation. It won't work unless you do follow instructions! WEB VOLUNTEERS AND DATABASES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We are always looking for volunteers who have HTML experience as well as programming experience for the JewishGen Web Site. If you are interested in participating in growing this WEB site for the benefit of the Jewish Genealogical community please send email to "web-vol@jewishgen.org" with your capabilities, your ideas and what you would like to work on. Under our current organization, we have volunteer(s) devoted to working on single subject pages or specific database engines. We hope this structure will allow us to maintain an organized approach to the site which in turn will be easily navigatable for the "browsers". The feedback thus far has been extremely positive as to it's design from both JewishGen readers as well as other outside sources. As with the JewishGen discussion group, our intentions will follow the same guiding light, to be the premier site for reference, education and useful tools for Jewish Genealogy researchers around the world. Your input and help in all phases of its design and development is necessary to make this happen. If you have any ideas on databases you would like to see "created" on our web server, existing databases or those being prepared by other organizations, who would like 1) a secure home with 2) professionally developed engines, please let us know. Send any information regarding these ideas and sources to "databases@jewishgen.org". EXPANDED AND NEW INFOFILES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Since it's inception a year ago, the number of InfoFiles has grown to well over 70 documents. Under the management of Bernie Kouchel, he has put in a great deal of effort over the year to make this one of the most organized and talked about JewishGen features. We have had on some days over 200 requests for InfoFiles and it's usage has exceeded all of our expectations. Way to go Bernie! Many of the programs implemented through JewishGen starting off as just ideas with no clue whether they will be well received... or will flop. So far we have had more HITS than MISSES, but the old adage follows here... you don't know, unless you try! If you have material that you think will benefit the readership, please submit them to "infofiles@jewishgen.org" for consideration. The use of the InfoFiles has been overwhelming and growing each day. We would like to encourage you to retrieve the INDEX (email: index@jewishgen.org) (web site: InfoFiles page - http://www.jewishgen.org) monthly (on or around the first of each month) so you can make sure you do use the exact NAMES of the files. If you are emailing to retrieve the files, please double check your spelling... and make note that "0's" are zeroes not "O's" letter O. Also make sure you use a numeral "1" rather than a "l" little "L". Some of us do have to get out of our old typewriter routines sooner or later.. SIG Groups ~~~~~~~~~~ Again, under Bernie's management we created the concept for housing SIG Groups (Special Interest Group) using JewishGen facilities to broaden the base of volunteers for different projects and once again, the marks have been exceptional and three of the four groups created during the last year are ready to present their work to you via both email and WEB searchable databases. The Yizkor Book SIG will soon have TWO SEARCHABLE engines on the WEB site, a result of a years worth of work. Eric Rose has done an exceptional job in programming one database, and Bruce Kahn the other. We hope to have email search engines available as well. The REIPP Sig has just produced it's first email searchable engine for the data it has been collecting and compiling during most of last year. It is installed and ready (waiting for instruction file) for beta testing. We hope to have a WEB engine as well so it too can be made available to the broadest base of our community. [REIPP now JRI-PL.] The new GRODNO SIG which is only a month old has about as many subscribers as does the older groups. They have some tall footsteps to fall into.. but we have no doubt they too will achieve great heights! Congratulations to the project leaders, Len Markowitz (Yizkor Project), Steve Zedeck (REIPP) and Jim Yarin (Grodno) for their leadership in directing their respective SIGS to the accomplishments you will soon be seeing. If you are interested in starting a SIG Group which should be designed to manage some indexing or special project, please send email to: "sigs@jewishgen.org". We will entertain proposals from anyone as long as there is a "PROJECT LEADER" in place and a "PURPOSE" for organizing. The SIG groups are not in place for queries or discussions which should be handled in JewishGen, but for the planning, develpment and implementation of Special Interest Projects. SPECIAL THANKS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We want to take this opportunity to thank some special individuals and their companies for their committment and support to JewishGen. Larry Tesler and the staff at eWorld (Apple Computer Inc.) for hosting the JewishGen Mailing List on their listserv and for taking on all the genealogy lists stranded at GATECH last March. Steve Nuchia and the staff at South Coast Computing for going the extra mile, as our mail and web site provider. They have provided an incredible amount of support over the year in changing over the domains, setting up the initial web site on their server and for their efforts today to provide us with the TOOLS and technology to expand the JewishGen WEB site for tomorrow's needs. Jason Fesler, the author of GIGO, the software which has made the JewishGen gateway, the InfoFiles, email search engines and SIG Groups possible. Jason has always been there for support of his software and has incorporated many of our special needs into his software over the year including but not limited to the filtering process we use for Auto-moderation. There is more to come! Eric Rose, an independent programmer who has put alot of energy and time into one of the Yizkor Book SIG's databases. Scott McGee, who is helping us build and develop another one of the future search engines. A name you will be seeing around here in the days to come. Karen Isaacson and Brian Leverich, special friends, active listowners of other very prominent genealogy mailing lists and newsgroups... who have been there for technical and perhaps moral support throughout the last year. Finally, we want to express our thanks to David Chapin and John Pimentel for their assistance during some key moves and periods during the last year. David, for including JewishGen with the soc.genealogy.* reorganization and his assistance during the early part of the year with the mailing list maintenance at GATECH; and John for his assistance in April, moving JewishGen and the other genealogy lists to our new home at eWorld. We wish them well and continued success in their personal endeavors! We are indebted to all for their service, their special commitment and for their support during 1995. It was truly a great year, a year which we hope will be our legacy for what we can expect in the years to come. May we look back on 1995 as a turning point for JewishGen, shared together with our fellow researchers around the world. May we pray that 1996 and subsequent years will follow closely in the same footsteps, continuing to meet and exceed the expectations of you the JewishGen readers and supporters. And may the success stories which abounded this year, continue into the next, as we all work to bring our families separated by war, back together again, once and for all. On behalf of all the JewishGen team, may we wish you a prosperous and Happy New Year. May our work together next year enrich our lives and the lives of future generations. This then, is just a little icing on the "cake" we are planning to dish out for 1996. We can probably all forget about maintaining our JewishGen diet! Susan E. King (susan.king@trace.cgsg.com) and the entire JewishGen TEAM -------------- [1Jan96sik]bik +----------------------------------------------------------------------+