From the Executive Director:

Executive Update for September, 2005
Posted by Joseph Rowlands on 10/01, 12:45am

Time for the monthly update. The stats look good again. We get pretty consistent growth figures each month. This time there are 114 new members, 4 new authors, 56 new articles, and 29 new extended profiles.

We've added a number of people to the staff. Andrew Bissell has started a Solo Montana local group, and Jody Allen Gomez has taken over as SOLO Georgia Coordinator. Marty Lewinter took the position of SOLO Education Leader, running that interest group. Michael Stuart Kelly has just started a new SOLO Psychology interest group.

A big addition to the staff is Dean Michael Gores joining in the position of Assistant Webmaster. For some time now Dean has been volunteering useful ideas for the site, testing new features, and letting me know when there are any problems. In this position he'll be adding some long-awaited features, some new features, general improvements and bug fixes, and I hope some of his own additions. I'm happy to have him added to the staff and I expect to see great things from him.

This month had a number of lengthy conversations on various topics, such as my "All or Nothing" speech and MSK's addiction thread. The lengthiest conversation by far was the discussion of James Valliant's book, The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics. The topic raged for awhile on the "Ayn Rand Smeared Again" thread, exceeding 500 posts on a single thread (a new record?). Lindsay Perigo had his own contribution in his article "The Passion of the Critics of Ayn Rand's Critics".

Julia Brent, our Director of Operations, has started doing monthly updates to keep everyone posted on her own progress in pushing SOLO to the next frontier. As one of her tasks, she's looking into location for the next SOLO Conference. This decision is going to be made based on finding an appropriate and specific venue. Suggesting a city or state won't help much unless we can find a place to actually have the meeting. If you're interested in helping to find a Sense of Life location for the next conference, contact Julia directly.

As mentioned before, Lindsay Perigo has joined SOLO as full time staff. He had some personal affairs to work through, but will be starting full time next week. Expect to see great things.

I want to finish this update by reminding people of what SOLO is about. As it says in our Credo, we seek nothing less than to change the world. I expect that a lot of you want the same thing. But if we're going to make changes, we can't merely sit back and expect others to do it for us. We have to take a more active role. We have to take our goal seriously, and put real thought and effort into making it happen. If you take Objectivism seriously and want to see it influence the world, I ask that you volunteer to help SOLO. You can make a difference. And the world isn't going to conquer itself.

New Staff

1.) Dean Michael Gores is the new Assistant Webmaster

2.) Andrew Bissell is SOLO Montana Coordinator

3.) Michael Stuart Kelly is SOLO Psychology Leader

4.) Jody Allen Gomez has taken over as SOLO Georgia Coordinator

5.) Marty Lewinter is the new SOLO Education Leader

Activism:

Want to help take over the world? Here are some simple ideas you can do to help.
1.) Take this time to contribute money and help pay for SOLOHQ. We take credit card.

2.) Write articles.

3.) Bookmark our Amazon referral page http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/importanceofp-20 so that we get a percent of Amazon's profits from your purchases. Lots of people use Amazon, and if you use our associate program, we benefit at no cost to you. You can right click on this link and "Add to Favorites" or "Bookmark this link".
4.) Put www.solohq.com in your email signature file. It's an easy way to spread the word about the best Objectivist website on the planet.
5.) Do you have a webpage? Add a link to SoloHQ.com. Also, add a link to our Ayn Rand page at http://www.solohq.com/ayn_rand/ayn_rand.shtml and our Objectivism page at http://www.solohq.com/Objectivism/. These improve our Google ranking and make it easier for young minds to find passionate reason and rational passion on the web.

Statistics:

Articles on SOLOHQ: 1425(56 this month)
Forum posts on SOLOHQ: 66,250 (5450 this month)
Author Count: 168 (4 new authors this month: Jody Allen Gomez, John Paul Sherman, Rick Giles, William Anthony Bardel)
SOLOHQ Members: 1952(114 new members this month)
Extended Profiles: 184 (29 new extended profiles this month)
Page Hits: 555,500

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