01/23/08--New Direction for Underground?
Several of us at tonight's meeting were discussing the relative lack of progress on creating a new Web site and we came to wonder if making a new Web site is the most productive use of our time.
It is not entirely clear that a better Web site would make any significant contribution to solving the fish problem: Much or all of the information our current site has, and that any new site would have, is already on the Internet. The most important pieces of information are on sites much more likely to be read by the general public than anything we would produce.
One of the articles we came across in our original Terrascope research stated that the success of existing "seafood education" efforts has been mixed at best. In order to be really effective, something new is probably in order.
So far, our main "new idea" is an effort to disseminate our message with other types of media, such as a documentary (proposed quite a while ago), YouTube videos, or articles for magazines such as Seventeen. We need some way to reach members of the public who don't read the New York Times or environmental group Web sites (the vast majority of people). Perhaps our unique insight into the new media can be of help.
We would like to discuss this further at next Sunday's meeting at 2 p.m. (it looks like we'll break for dinner, and then the movie will follow). If you can't make it, please respond to this e-mail and/or leave something on this page.
Save the fish!
Other things to keep in mind.
The museum exhibits class will be accomplishing some of the same goals that we have in underground, basically getting the word out there in a creative manner. We should keep this in mind and remember that what we do as a club or whatever isn't completely separate from what the class is doing. Also, if and when we do give presentations such as the Spark class, we should make sure to tell them about the museum exhibit, even if its opening is still a ways off.