Re: E-memberships

I was away for the weekend, so I am catching up, and feel it is time to chime in from the technical end.

First of all, I am 100% in favor of an electronic memberships.

Next: I don't see the need for three memberships . If you want the hard copy Bulletin sign up for it.

If you want e-services (which would include some form of the Bulletin articles plus other things), sign up for that too. It is an extra service.

The KISS principle always applies. Keep It Simple

A lot of publications do that now. Consumer Reports and Cook's Illustrated come to mind.

However, this is likely to be a big job. First you have to have someone put together the material. Next you need a web-person to design and implement web pages. I am not saying that our current webmaster could not do it, I just doubt that he has the time.

There would be some things that he likely could not do. E.g., suppose we want to have the Bulletin articles searchable. That requires a database and a search engine. True, we don't have to build them from scratch, but I don't know if our current AIS website host has the support we would need for either the database itself or the programming resources to develop the interface for us. So we might need another host. That costs, development costs. Ongoing updates cost (at least someone's time)

This is not going to be a tomorrow thing. We need to decide what we want (for instance another possible e-member benefit could be access online to a search engine for the most recent R&I)

Once we know what we want to do then we can figure out how to get it done and what it will cost/ Then we can figure out if it is worth it to us (and immediate revenue is not necessarily the only benefit we should consider short term. It maybe an important first investment in the future.)

John

On Mar 31, 2006, at 12:57 PM, Robt R Pries wrote:

I think Jill makes some good points. While we are
brainstorming let me make an additional suggestion.
Why not three types of members?

1. Subscription to Bulletin (traditional membership)
2. E-membership only
3. E-membership with subscription.

The first would be what we all have now. The second
would cost just a little less, The economy rate. The
third would cost somewhat less then the other two
combined.

In essence we already have an e-membership that just
gets one access to the registrations on line. If this
were greatly enhanced with other material, bulletin
articles, programs, etc. It probably would attract
many internet users.

The third provides the benefits of the internet
membership but one also receives the printed bulletin.
I would bet that most people would want this last
form.

As a life member I would gladly pay extra for
additional services available on the internet. The
more impressive these could be the more likely people
would value them and want the last membership. Since
the internet is not without some costs (although less
then printing) we may want to be careful as to what we
would charge for this service.


--- Jill Bonino <aissecjill@earthlink.net> wrote:


This is great discussion....

From the Treasurer standpoint, here are some
thoughts/ideas...

Pricing of e-memberships could take a two level
form...

    1.  E-only memberships
    2.   E-member with printed Bulletin

This would be in addition to our current non-e
memberships which I think we
must still offer as is.  I would say a portion of
our membership (I don't
know how big or small) do not have computer access
and will not be getting
it and this is a valuable membership to maintain.

E-only should be the same price or only a little
lower than now even though
we are not printing and mailing a Bulletin 4 times a
year...The e-member
would have access to more information (plus shopping
capabilities) than is
available now, and that is valuable.

E-member with printed Bulletin should be more
expensive than the dues price
now.  The member would be getting info and services
not previously
accessible.

(FYI-The Wall Street Journal has a two level price,
one for the paper only
and one (higher price) for the paper plus on-line
access.)

Would it be possible to have every e-member set up
their own password and
"login" like other vendors do for their shopping
websites?

All member tiers would be on the Master website
(that is accessible to the
public) so people can join and renew the kind of
membership they want
(e-member or non-e member).

I also would want the password only accessible site
to be security protected
so we can put the Storefront items and anything else
that we may want to
offer for purchase  on it and people can pay
electronically.

Now...What about our current Life Members?...They
have paid for printed
Bulletins for the rest of their life.  We have set
the price based on
printed Bulletins...

Some of our Life members would want to stay as they
are but others might
want to have e-member access too?  Should they be
charged an additional Life
e-Member fee?  And what about new members who would
to join as a Life
E-Member?  Do we offer this and at how much?

Jill Bonino


----- Original Message -----
From: "Terry Aitken" <terry@flowerfantasy.net>
To: <aisdiscuss@aisboard.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2006 8:37 PM
Subject: Re: [AISdiscuss] E-memberships



It seems to me that there is an index in each

bulletin and that, by

clicking on it, you could pick up specific

articles. If the annual ads

and the masthead are somewhere else on the web

with little revision

quarterly, the size of the bulletin becomes much

more manageable. I dont

know how you would deal with pictures. Maybe there

is a picture index?

-or pictures are embedded in the articles? I would

bet that Erica would

be really good at this and a natural to set up

this work since she sets

up the Bulletin in the first place. She does not

do websites so that is

another step and another person..She could

certainly isolate an index

and a series of articles/pictures and forward them

to the webmaster.

This sounds pretty reasonable to me.
   Restricted access for e-members or regular

members is an interesting

concept. I like it.
Terry

Robt R Pries wrote:


If we are going to offer an e-membership I would
assume that the articles of the current bulletin

would

appear there during the quarter that that bulletin

is

active. I dont think the bulletin could possibly

be

one file, but a file for each article. I would

assume

that such an arrangement would add considerably to

the

work of a web-master and that it may incur

additional

server costs. I believe a web membership should
provide something similar to a print subscription
membership with other possible options that might
attract members. I would not expect our present

staff

to do this alone, or without compensation. A

virtual

member might be lower cost to service, but not

without

cost. We need to think about what we would want to
provide and how much it would cost to service

this.

Just like the online registry there are immense
opportunities here, but nothing is totally free. I
would think if we do our job well, regular members
might want to pay extra, to be virtual members

also.

Although I would expect considerable overlap. I do

not

think we should think in terms of just replacing

one

with the other.

--- John I Jones <jijones@usjoneses.com> wrote:




If you are talking about a specific bulletin, I

am

not sure that it is
ever assembled in a single program file. It may

be

that it is laid out
in Quark with space reserved for the pictures.

Then

once it is ripped
and paged out for the press, that the pictures

are

added. I don't know,
but we can find out.

My understanding is that each Bulletin edition

takes

up two CDs. That
means that it could be as much as 1.4 Gigabytes.
Anyone interested in
downloading a PDF that big? Remember that for

print

the minimum
resolution is 300dpi. That means that a 4 X 4
picture is about 2.5
Megabytes.

Sure we can break it into separate articles fit

the

graphics, lower the
resolution of the pictures and create "PDF

pieces",

but who is going to
do that?

I am not trying to be negative, but some things,
even with todays'
computer techniques, are just not there yet.

I really hope I am wrong about this.

John



On Mar 30, 2006, at 2:43 PM, Robt R Pries wrote:




I would suggest that articles, bulletins etc, be
available so that they can be read by adobe

reader





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John                | "There be dragons here"
                         |  Annotation used by ancient cartographers
                         |  to indicate the edge of the known world.

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