#92: 1 January 2010
FROM THE EDITOR
Ailsa Wylie, English Editor
newsletter@…
Happy New Year, DEvas!
The weather is not cooperating with my technology! My dialup modem can’t get a signal during a Hakodate snowstorm and my boyfriend’s mother doesn’t have a computer, so I can’t work on the newsletter from here. Isn’t it funny how quickly we’ve come to take these things for granted? At least my iPhone, officially displaying a line of underbars, is scraping a little signal out of somewhere.
It’s amazing how much time I can waste online sometimes. Reading this thing leads to that one, which leads to something else. Then it led me to an interesting article (http://www.slate.com/id/2224932/) recently, about how the part of our brain that is programmer to “seek” (from an evolutionary point of view) is also the reason we can’t tear ourselves away from our computers or iPhones. We continually crave new information and input.
So my New Year’s resolution is to wrestle with this evolutionary bugaboo and make better use of my time, both on – and offline. I don’t expect to succeed every time, but it would be good for my health to spend more time at the gym and less on Wikipedia.
良いお年を！
ROTA LEADER REPORT
Cathy Cox, Rota Leader for January and February 2010
leader@…
Happy New Year to everyone! It’s New Year’s Resolution Time — time to reflect on the failures and successes of the previous year and to make plans for the new year. Five members of the current DEJ Steering Committee were able to get together for a meeting in mid-December and lay out a few plans for 2010.
The first of these is the Rota-leader schedule. A few of you might be wondering what this Rota-leader position is and why a different person seems to be filling the role every few months. Rather than having an appointed leader who presides over the group for a year, leadership responsibilities are rotated among the Steering Committee members every few months.
For this reason, while I regularly fill the role of Web Content Coordinator, I’ll be wearing a second hat as Rota leader for January and February; similarly, our Membership Coordinator, Misa, will be serving as Rota leader in March and April; Events Coordinator Waki will be Rota leader in May and June; Media Coordinator Chiharu will be Rota leader in July and August; Workshop Coordinator Chiyuki will be Rota leader in September and October; then the rotation returns to me for November and December.
Some of you might be wondering, “What exactly does a Rota leader do, besides writing a greeting in the monthly newsletter?” Well, besides writing the newsletter report, it’s the Rota-leader’s responsibility to supervise the DEJ mailing list in case any conflicts or issues arise; to keep tabs on the activities of the various Team Coordinators from the Steering Committee; and to organize Steering Committee (SC) meetings; and to organize the regular “Meet-the-DEvas” (MTD) events.
Last year we tried holding both SC and MTD meetings every month, but this proved to be too taxing on the our personal schedules. So, for 2010, we’ve decided to alternate between SC and MTD meetings every month. This means that we will hold the informal MTD meetings once every two months (bi-monthly), starting in February. We’ll announce details about this meeting in the February Newsletter as well as in a general announcement to the DEJ mailing list — we hope to see many new and old faces at our first meeting of the year!
One more thing (sorry!): At the December SC meeting, we also discussed some ongoing issues we’ve been having with Yahoo!Groups, including some quirks in its handling of lists as well as its seeming lack of support of Japanese characters within the Yahoo!Groups web interface. For this reason, we’re thinking of moving the list to Google Groups and perhaps creating a DEJ groups page in Facebook. If any DEJ members have opinions or advice on this matter, please post to the list!!
MEMBERSHIP TEAM NEWS
Misao Kajiro, Membership Coordinator
membership@…
Total membership was 354 as of the 28th of December.
Welcome Yoko Wolf, Selwa Sweidan (rejoined as she has come back to Tokyo) and Mio Tsujiya to DEJ! Please send your introductions to the main list.
I thank you for your support in 2009, and I look forward to your feedback to make DEJ’s activities better in 2010. Wishing you all a wonderful time in the New Year.
EVENT TEAM NEWS
Waki Kawamoto, Event Coordinator
events@…
Thank you all again for coming to the event on the 17th of December.
With your support, we raised 121,150 yen for Beers for Bytes. They will donate the money to support pilot programs for wireless internet access in Nepal and Vietnam:
Happy new year!
WEB TEAM NEWS
Cathy Cox, Web Content Coordinator
web@…
The Web Team’s New Year’s Resolution for 2010 is to go public with the new and improved DEJ website in February. Wish us luck!
SUBMISSIONS TO THE NEWSLETTER
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Editors (E to J) who can help in publishing this newsletter.
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The Digital Digest is brought to you by the Newsletter Team:
Koko Iwata, Yoko Kawabe, Angelica Lim, and Ailsa Wylie.