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The Great Class of 1965 Website
More properly, The Great Class of 1965 has websites...
5 in all of which all are addressable via their own urls:
BIG GREEN 65
www.BigGreen65.com is The Class' main site. Here Classmates will find the normal information one expects. Addresses from the President,
Treasurer's Report, Mini-Reunion Update, Meetings, Newsletters, Obits, etc. Content is provided by Officers and openly
solicited for Classmate contributions.
DARTMOUTH WINTER CARNIVAL
www.DartmouthWinterCarniVAIL.com is now a major site that contains all of the past SIX Class of '65 Mini-Reunions at Vail, plus this years effort
to really "brand" the event for The Class, The Vail Dartmouth Club, all alums... and students who would really like
to experience a Dartmouth Winter Carnval with alums who helped establish to Original Winter Carnival concept in
Hanover, NH.
BETTER THAN BAKER
www.BetterThanBaker.com is an opus which is designed to be a portal for all of Dartmouth. Here, there are links to many of the popular
news, political, and humor publications. There are links to National TV broadcasters both network and cable.
STILL ON THE ROAD
www.StillOnTheRoad.com is a site with the purpose of profiling Classmates in their business and their ongoing lives. The site originally
started as a page on biggreen.com. It then was transferred to sotr.com for the 40th reunion where it frankly
didn't gather much attention. Notwithstanding, this original page has been re-created in its own site which will now
be promoted to Classmates, for it serves a very useful purpose. For example: Newsletters
are segmented. There is no continuity w/r/t a 'Mates insertions. With this site, information can be collected on an
individual so that there is a history file, of sorts, for that Classmate. This information, added to the business,
professional, personal urls provided by the Classmate, plus links to other sites such as personal blogs or photosites, will
provide a 'mate with his own cyberport WITH a separately addressable page, https://biggreen65.tripod.com/matename, to which an easier to remember url such as www.matename.com can be registered and re-directed.
40th REUNION
https://biggreen65.tripod.com/reunion was once accessible via sotr.com. Today, it remains "live" and intact as it appeared last year. Other classes have visited this
site and garnered ideas from it. Therefore it remains published as another gift from the Great Class of '65 for all
of Dartmouth to reference, "boost," and freely use.
FREQUENCY: The websites are updated on a periodic basis such as Class Officers' Weekend, The Fall
Officers' Meeting at Pierces, The Summer Meeting, Newsletters, and Obituaries. Also at season's change, the photos of The
College are swapped for those reflecting the season. In the Autumn during football season, the site is updated
weekly with a new front page with the fight song for the Ivy football opponent which Dartmouth is to played that weekend.
During the late winter, the site was updated almost daily as Steve Waterhouse and I worked to create the alumni equivalent
to Winter Carnival in Winter CarniVAIL. With each update, an email is sent to Classmates for whom we have address
with a link to the updated site/page..
TRAFFIC: We average about 100 pages hits a day...3, 000 for the month. During the Winter CarniVAIL
period we to about 4,000. This was due to the constant updates... plus the great music which was added. In general, our
traffic is very much driven by the emails which are sent out announcing the updates. There is an immediate spike after
transmission. The BetterThanBaker site plus the old Dartmouth Glee Club tunes are designed to bring repetitive traffic.
While it is more difficult to determine the Better Than Baker hits, one can see a lot of hits for .mp3 file which are
the music files. So, for certain, the music is an attraction!
Below are two reports...the numbers are deceiving because they refer to files downloaded, not visitors. Still one
can see the impact of EMAIL. In the fall, I would send out an email with each weekly update. Look at the chart... Hockey
stick northward! The traffic slowed right after the last game... Then in last of January... early February, Steve Waterhouse and
I started to get into gear to literally BRAND Dartmouth Winter CarniVAIL... the chart launch upward.
NASA would love such a trajectory. By April, the traffic halted as there were no emails sent to announce updates.
INTERNET
101
EMAIL PROPELS TRAFFIC TO THE SITE.
FRESH CONTENT BRINGS VISITORS BACK.
P-E-R-I-O-D!
END OF COURSE
2006-2007 GOALS
The overall goal is to drive more traffic to the site. 3,000 page hits are decent... but our sites deserve
more attention, for they contain valuable content. Looking over the past year, I believe that The Class
of 65 took steps to the goal as it had in previous years: A- for keeping the main site up to date based on content available. A+
for the CarniVAIL and Fall football updates. B overall on the Better Than Baker, though A+ initially; currently, the
site needs expansion. (Fortunately, the links lead to updated information.) D on the
development of Still On The Road. And, C on the development of any centralized email list... though A on individual
efforts of the officers to maintain their lists.
So Based on The Above, Here Are The Overall
Goals
1) TO EXCEL IN CONTENT: The goal is not to just have a class
site, but to build a collection of sites that are for The Class, The College, and The Dartmouth Community.
There should be slicker sites w/r/t technique, especially from the newer classes, but there will not be a better site for
content.
2) TO REDOUBLE OUR EMAIL EFFORT: Email is the power took that
drives people to the site. Last year one of our goals was to get a handle on the email addresses. In general,
I would say that this email list creation effort has not been successful to date Yet, As the above chart shows, there
is a direct link between website visits and emails. For this an other reason which will be covered in a separate
page, it is imperative that The Class redoubles its efforts.
3) TO INTRODUCE DOWNLOADABLE DOCUMENTS/AUDIO/VIDEO FILES WHICH CLASSMATES HAVE PRODUCED:
This is a no-brainer. By now Classmates have generated thousands of business white papers, medical findings, research
reports, political opinions, etc. So what good are they in a file drawer or buried in an obscure search engine listing
or library filing system? Gents, if it isn't the time to shared your accumluated wisdom, now, when will it
be?
4) TO INTRODUCE E-COMMERCE ON THE SITE: The Boots 'n Beanie Northwoods
Trading Post is about to open it doors with merchandise and postings from fellow Classmates. Will the Herb West Book
be the first item? Perhaps yes, but perhaps not... for there are Classmates with other offerings on the receiving dock,
including the The Class, itself, with Official Boots 'n Beanine logoed sportswear.
5) TO INTRODUCE VIDEO STREAMING TO THE WEBSITE: Two of the fastest
growing areas on the web are video streaming/conferenceing (YouTube and others) and social networking (MySpace and others).
Currently over 70 % of the Internet users have some form of high-speed connection. Dial-up users have already been marginalized
by the rapid expansion of the Web...and will soon learn first hand the truth of the last words uttered by the last living
dinosaur, "Adapt or Die."
6) TO PROVIDE TOOLS AND GRAPHICS FOR OTHER ALUMS FROM
ALL CLASSES TO USE AND ENJOY: Perhaps to some visitors who have already "boosted" graphics from our
site this is a laughable, non-goal since none of the graphics on the sites are "right-click-protected" anyway.
This is true and on purpose. Nonetheless, this goal is focused on centralize the images so that Classmates
and classes can conveniently find the tools and graphics.
"Sotts"
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