Thursday, February 7, 2008

moving forward

Dear ISED-L readers,

The co-managers have no interest in demonizing Peter, as Marti has pointed
out. We apologize to Peter and the rest of the ISED-L community if we have
given this impression.

All tech tools - even when they may be part of an inevitable future (or
present) - have upsides and downsides, and to the extent one is able, one
is wise to examine what trades are part of the deal when making choices
about using them. That's why we sent the message we did, and that's why we
asked Peter to suspend the feed until we could hear from all of you. That
it took longer than it should have to post our query is regrettable, but
we hope we might be forgiven for a rare misstep in our history of
responsive service to ISED-L readers.

What we are interested in is keeping good faith with the readers we have a
formal responsibility for serving. Like many of you, we feel connected to
our "stuff" on ISED-L and, while we recognize we can't always control
where it goes once people hit send, sometimes we can. When we can, we
believe we serve you best by making the choice deliberately, and together,
and with an informed awareness of what it means for the community. There's
really nothing more to it than that--no villains, no drama, no hidden
agendas, not trying to anticipate everyone's preferred technological
future, just managing the listserv.

The discussion was unlikely to be a tidy affair with a pat answer.
Disruptive technology tends to have that effect on people, as we all see
in our daily work wherever we are. The discussion bears this out.

The best outcome for the ISED-L community will result from reaching a
consensus about this issue built upon the kind of thoughtfully engaging
posts we have all come to value on the list. If no consensus emerges, then
the co-managers will do what we think is in the listserv's best interests,
and readers will need to decide how they'll respond.

Thank you for your continued investment and participation in ISED-L.

Curt Lieneck
ISED-L Co-Manager

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