So what conf's. do you want folks to host; existing ones or new ones we dream up? And how much does it pay? :-)

Everything here except austen, media and food, which have hosts. Pay depends on the amount of traffic and quality of comments you can bring in. Most of our paying stuff is building websites for folks.

ummm, how about parenting or homeschooling? Those are the only things I know much about, except how to play in rock bands for 20+ years without dying or being killed...

I could start a parenting conference like we had on the old Spring. It got a good bit of activity before. Would you be interested in hostint a 'parenting' conference?

sure, but I am not sure exactly what hosting would entail. Can you fill me in a little?

Being a host would mainly mean checking in and keeping the flow of conversation going. And a super host would go out and find other websites to add links to their conference.

ok, I guess I would like to give it a try....

I would be willing to host a parenting conference as you inquired earlier. I will wait for you to set one up, then I will create a homeschool topic within. Is that cool, if not you tell me what you want instead - ok? p.s. thanks for your response to my e-mail - glad it was not my software again that was keeping me out of here because I have had a bad week computer wise and was not ready to re-install everything (phew)

OK then, I'll set up 'parenting' this weekend.

The danger of playing in rock bands isn't limited to dying or being killed. I learned this from playing jazz a while. What is more likely is impaired hearing, and going mad. Actually, going mad wouldn't be all that bad-- actually improves performance. But then they lock us up. BTW, how did you arrive at your netname? I suppose you froth at the mouth when you brush your teeth; something harmless like that. But just in case, I'm gonna run my anti-virus (thorough check) on this system just as soon as I sign off.

Precisely how do your hosts "find other websites to add links to their conference"? Still not clear on the pay scale. Like when I asked this church what they could pay a tech consultant. In round numbers. Turns out I was right, except that it was just one number. But it was round...

well, (drymartini), my wife gave me that name long ago when we were kids. We used to drink a cheap wine called MD 20/20 (made by mogen david), but we just called it maddog. The maddog era was a short one, but the name stuck, I guess because I was always a bit of a rebel and a risk-taker, so the "mad" part was still appropriate. Yes, you do tend to get a bit deaf and mad in the rock venue, but never locked up so far... ...so, no need to run that virus program on my account. But what about that online name of yours? Are we to assume that you are nursing a drymartini while you defrag your hard drive? And what is your real name, if you don't mind my asking. Oh yes, and I asked earlier, what is your business. I only know that you are a musician(instruction and performance), a woman, and a PA resident. So how about some more dirt on you, come on, spill yer guts lady!

Current conferences with the number of topics: apps 327 austen 121 yapp 41 sports 30 web 28 deeper 21 media 19 music 16 internet 15 radio 14 books 12 austin 12 food 10 projects 10 cultures 9 porch 8 windows 7 dpo 6 dsm 5 tv 5 movies 5 environment 5 community 5 poetry 5 travel 5 fitness 4 politics 4 politics 4 sex 4 newtest 3 computer 2 techbusiness 2 restaurants 1 austentest 1 lovelinks 0 art 0 parent 0

Hey, terry, can you make me a host in the restaurant conference, also, or would that be a conflict of interest? WER

No, that would be very cool. Consider it done.

Okay. And if you ever need help typing in kid's books, let me know and I can e-mail you the chapters I've got done. WER

Sure, email 'em or post 'em on your website. I'll be you set up as host today sometime in restaurants. What I need mostly is for folks to make realaudio recordings or casette recordings that I can convert to realaudio.

Could probably arrange that also. Guys or gals, and what stories? WER

Either or both. I'll have to do an inventory of what stories need sounds.

..........Ok, just keep me posted. WER

Definitely, will do. How did the AOL configuration go?

so-so...need to set up a second isp for myself at home, and let the wife use AOL and me use the REAL one... Anyway, wanna turn the GenX conference over to me too, or no?

And did I read the first topic in the news conf correctly? Am I a cohost in there?!?!? (if'n so, thanks for the compliment!)

Yeah, where do I need to set you up as host. By the way, today or tomorrow we'll probably stop being spring.com and the spring.net era begins fully. I've been tweaking the dns tables today.

For now, far as I know, just news and genx...

i would be interested in hosting the science and philosophg�3~ philosophy confs, either or both would be fine!

Then both it is! I'll set you up as host in science and philosophy, or co host in philosophy with americ azevido.

Now, what about me in genx and news...

wow! thanks terry.

OK wer in genx and news. Here goes.

Uh oh Ray! You're headed into the fray now!

I guess, when you turn on my hostly powers in genx and news, you probably ought to do so in sex, also...

guess who likes to be on top?!?!

or, maybe you should make Stacey hostess/mistress/dominatrix of the sex conf... don't feel like guessing today, so just tell me, who?

hey grumpy man... sounds like maybe today you should just lie there then! (whatsa matter you, hey?!?!)

huh?

lookit us!! online simeltaneously... hmm... we could bring new meaning to 'simeltaneous orgasm' or mutual masturbation! Actually, now that I think about it, we are far to late in the cyber game to have discovered either of those! Howya been? and how do we talk real time?

in re your last two questions: same old, same old...call, move or visit would be my guess, are you on at school or home?

at home on the 'slower than molasass in the wintertime' Earthlink connection. (I hate Netscape!)

you can try http://venus.beseen.com/chat/rooms/f/3580/ if you want...it's my chat room

ok, wer asked me if i wanted to host poetry. i said i was willing. is a hostess needed? (shall i make appetizers?)

That's great - you'll make a great host! What will the appetizers consist of?

You'll get added as a poetry host, wolfie!

cool beans! (please send instructions, isn't there, like, a manual on hosting?) riette: strawberries and champagne, oh, and cherries, and, of course, some raw meat.....

first off, Wolf: you will need a new login name of wolf because Terry didn't capitolize Wolf in the host list, or get him to go change that

as to the manual, it's at http://www.armidalesoftware.com/docs/intro.html

Terry? should be Wolf, dearie *thanks*

ok, how come i'm not seeing it?

wer, i went to the site and learned that i probably don't know what the heck i'm doing. what do i need to begin?

the right login name... for example...in three confs I'm a host as wer, in two others as KitchenManager, so I set-up a new login as wer and only have the confs I'ma host in on my hot list under that name...if you want to go that route, and only login as wolf when you want to exercise your hostly powers, the next time you're on, instead of logging in, go to http://www.spring.net/ and join as wolf, you can even use the same password

Can't you hold up something she'll understand better? Like http://www.sheep.drumstick/ Stupid joke, sit.

HELP!!! (thanks for the thought, riette).... where in the heck do i start? read the stuff at the website wer gave me (again) but it doesn't help with where i add code to change anything? plus, i'm logged in as usual but there's no kill switch or whatever (the thing i read about) and as far as it's concerned, i'm really not the host....can anyone elaborate for me please?!?!

at the moment you have to be logged in as wolf not Wolf...

oh, silly me :)

de nada...

you read my latest mail right? am i, like, screwed up or what?

to which o' my addresses? nothing comes to mind as being out of the ordinary...

aol.....nothin' urgent, just reiterated a fav topic (wonderin' if you had seen it or were ignoring me!)

frown? not ignoring you, just not sure how to respond, I guess... what do you think, shouldn't Riette be host of the art conference?

never been there, but if she were host, yes, definately would go, maybe riette could display some of her work? (that would be a yes) (just be honest-email me) gotta go, way way past this wolf's bedtime, g'night and hopefully no nightmares!

or, *gulp* nightstallions!

I never do anything unless somebody asks me so - I'm far too modest, as you all know.

and shy and evasive and meek and demure and...

innocent

oh, yeah, I almost forgot...

Just like you really.

Really?

About as really as teeth on a chicken!

you all will be glad to know i did not suffer from any nightmares or stallions! riette, won't you be our art host? pleeeeeeeze???

I'd luuuuuuuuuv to, Wolfie, but I can't figure it out. Have you managed to get yourself registered as host of poetry yet??

yes, but haven't been able to do anything with it. buuuutttt, with a little help from my friends, i think i'll be ok. you can do it, riette!!

Thanks, Wolf, I'll try anyway.

Riette has been set up with hostly powers in 'art'.

Thank you, Terry. Will you remain co-host? I'll do all the work if you can put it onto screen for me, or teach me how to do it. Deal?

Sure, deal.

Great!! How's your roomie?

She's fine. I got 5 new room mates at the new place. Pays the bills! And they're all fine folks.

That sounds like alot of fun. So you take turns doing the cooking, and cleaning and all that?

Yeah, the group here is really fun. Everyone gets along and the place stays real clean. Beth just cruised in from Houston. There's a couple, Mark and Mercedes (she's from Honduras), Kristen is the most organized so far. And Bill is a pretty cool guy, kind of shy. Kristen's friend Jaylin is coming by to stay a couple of days, she's a 27 year old skydiver. And my son, Shey, just stayed for 10 days. Got to do a lot of swimming and baseball watching, movie going, basketball playing, etc. It's really a fun place, the pool has been a real great thing to have with this hot summer. It's a big house with lots of rooms, just like my place in Cedar Creek, so it makes life comfortable for a group of folks like this.

WOW, the good life! We got our flat long before we even planned marriage. It was rather nice and big back then. Then I had a baby, and it became a little smaller, but hey, it was okay. Then I had another baby, and it became more of a little smaller - sigh. Now we have the little guinea pigs on top of that, and it's just bloody small!

I still don't really know what to do as a host, besides posting stuff and creating new topics (which everybody else does, too, and I did before I was made a host). We need to educate hosts to be a great community.

But to educate hosts, we need to have someone who knows what they are doing...

ahh... looks like another topic to me.

well, Miss Multi-conference Hostess witha da Mostest (and teaching experience to boot) why not go start one, hon?

I second the motion.

and if you feel like giving me...

...another, say, five bucks, we'll forget about the whole thing? NO WAY! I want to know, AND I want a host-kit, like all the other boyscout groups got!

And I never got it. Anyways, food for thought for you folks. Comments much appreciated: Amateurs Lead Web Community-Building ( 5/13/99; 12:00 PM EST) By Mo Krochmal, TechWeb NEW YORK -- Howard Rheingold, who pinpointed virtual communities long before they became a gold mine for Internet business, said the best communities are being built by amateurs -- not businesses. Rheingold, who, in 1993, wrote The Virtual Community: Homesteading at Electronic Frontier, said Thursday at the new-media conference here in New York, Edgewise 99, the Web is operating on false assumptions about community. There are three "Cs" for success in the Internet business -- content, commerce, and community, Rheingold said. Companies such as GeoCities and Tripod have been built on providing a place for people of like minds to gather online around a business plan based on giving away websites. "Offering free Web pages is not community," he said. But, clearly, it is profitable. In January, portal site Yahoo acquired GeoCities for stock worth $4 billion. GeoCities provides free home pages to more than 3 million members and makes revenue by posting advertising on member sites. It's a business plan many others are emulating. That is the wrong approach, said Rheingold. The projections about this type of online business are off by several orders of magnitude, he said. Building a community is a cost of doing business, not a source of profit, he said. And, online businesses that want to build communities between their customers, their suppliers, and others should be prepared to listen and act, he said. "You have to ask if you are prepared to reorganize your people and your resources in response to what people tell you [online]," Rheingold said. "If you don't respond, they will go away, and then you are turning away somebody who was a customer and wanted to participate in your business." Rheingold said high-quality communication, a registration process, and trust are keys to online community, as well as a technology that engenders a free flow of conversation, not just a bulletin board. Sometimes, community building has unintended repercussions, said Rheingold, citing America Online and its battle with the 10,000 volunteers who moderate its chat rooms and help newcomers. Several volunteers have filed complaints against AOL with the U.S. Department of Labor, saying they should be receiving pay and benefits. "If they had just sent them a lousy T-shirt, they could still use them as slave labor," said Rheingold. "Now they have [angered] them, and they have a problem." You have to pay people who know how to make a lively environment, he said, and then you encourage a community to police itself. There is a future for including community in an enterprise, he said. "But it is not about 10 times return on an investment in three years," he said. "It will take a while to grow." The online communities that are growing around people who share similar experiences such as AIDS or caring for a relative with Alzheimer's disease are building communities on a online bulletin board or a newgroup, he said. "For those people, it's a lifeline, and it's a serious business," he said. "But it's amateurs -- and will continue that way." � 1998 CMP Media, Inc.

hmm...interesting...

amateur...that would be me, yep...

and welcome Marcia as the hostess of the new geology, etcetera, conf... http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/browse/Geo/all

Can we do kind of hosts roll call? Would the hosts here mind telling everyone what conference(s) they host and what's going on there?

i host science, which is a moribund conference, and philosophy, which is showing signs of life.

I host MUSIC, which occasionally is lively lately, InternationalConflicts, which is kinda, hmh, laying around, waiting for worse to get better (traffic-wise, strictly traffic-wise) and ViridianCuria, which was created too late to meet the window of opportunity I saw for it... I'll try revive this later this fall. Meanwhile, I still haven't seen some useful infos on how to rig still so it looks cool (like GEO or FOOD). Admitted, I don't have a lot of time, at least I post regularly. I started a bunch of topics in CULTURES, which occasionally are lively, too (like the VIOLENCE CULTURE topic, among others).

As to missing knowhow, I've given up in April trying to find out how to post pics. Running after folks asking everybody and getting no satisfying reply after weeks got me to abandon that.

You use an img src tag which is a left angle bracket, then the words img src then the equals sign the a quote then the url of the image (which you get by right mouse clicking on it and getting properties) then another quote and then a closing angle bracket. That's how in words. But do a web search for img src and find a good website tutorial on it. <p> <IMG SRC="http://www.utoronto.ca/webdocs/HTMLdocs/NewHTML/image-examples.html/testicon.gif" ALT="[Test image]" ALIGN=LEFT> Here is some text related to the test image. <br> It is not very interesting, but should show how the text is wrapped around the image given the <br clear="left"> ALIGN=leftcalignment attribute. . Note how the element <br clear="left"> clears the flow of text to fall after the image. This is rendered: Here is some text related to the test image. It is not very interesting, but should show how the text is wrapped around the image given the ALIGN=left alignment attribute.

I host Geo which has lots of important brains lurking but none posting. There are the faithful who come to check what I have been doing and what is the state of our planet. I cover topics as diverse as jewels (both organic and inorganic), bioregions, storms and weather (very popular right now with the hurricanes menacing the East Coast), and my all time favorite, Vulcanism which deals with volcanoes world-wide as well as my home ones, Mauna Loa and Kilauea. We also have topics on rock hounding and diagnostics so you can tell what you found out there on the ground. More stuff than that, though...come see! http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/browse/geo/all/

Is there an unhosted conference that anyone wants to host. I hope Ree tells us about her conferences. wer is on sabbatical from food and restaurants, but they're still very happening places.

Thank you, Terry, and excuse me, everybody, for having been grouchy lately! Too much bovine activity here, lately, and sometimes, it's just too much bull to handle. (Especially if I'm confronted with bulls I can't personally tackle...) Terry, does this mean, the pics have to be on a webserver somewhere before creating a link? Do they have to be embedded in a webpage, whose address I give then? Is there a default directory everybody puts the pics files to?

Alexander, I have hard disk space at Spring if you want to send me pics. I will send you the URL of them and you can post them. They do have to be on a webserver before you can post them.