Summertime and some thoughts

Hello Everyone!

Sorry for the silence. Jessie and I have been on an extended roadtrip visiting family. I hope summer is treating everyone well! I just wanted to post a few thoughts and I would love to get feedback either in the comments or at the class officers email.

1. 10th Reunion is now less than 2 years away and we have to start organizing and planning. I think it would be wonderful if we could have a few people be reunion leads responsible for recruiting volunteers, taking opinon polls, and encouraging people to come. Because I know we are all extemely busy, it would be great to get a handful of people who would be the contact for all 99ers from a small group of houses. My hope is that having everything broken down will make the work of contacting everyone more manageable and not overwhelm a single person. Ideally it would be great to get one reunion lead from each house, this would make the work load very small and make me die of excitment. Is this something anyone would be interested in helping with? Would this work for you?

2. Blogger has become a bit of a pain and we are looking into moving the blog to wordpress. If we move it over we will be able to offer more functionality and integrate the blog into a domain I purchased for the class. The change would not happen for a while, but I'm just trying to plan ahead. Anyone have any objections or ideas as to why the switch would be a bad idea? Of course, there will be a link from here to there so that everyone can get to the right place.

3. I have updated the classmates link section. Please let us know if your name is still missing or something is incorrect.

4. If you are in the Providence, Rhode Island area keep your eyes open for an email announcing a Smithie pub gathering hosted by the class of 1999. Not sure when it will happen, but it will be sometime in the next month.

Take care all and keep in touch with us!
Tiffany

whoops.

I needed to fix something in our blog template early this morning, and I accidentally cleared our list of classmate links. My apologies to those that got removed... we're going try to recover as many links as we can today by digging through saved emails. If you don't see your site in the sidebar (or would like it added there) please add a comment to this post and I'll take care of it.

Were you a blog contributor?

Blogger finally forced us to upgrade the blog to the new system and in the process we seem to have lost some of our contributors. If you are a contributor and have not upgraded your account please do so, we think this may be the problem. We hope that by upgrading you will be reactivated as a contributor. If you are still having problems please send us an email and we will add you back.

We are always looking for new people to help out with posting. If you would like to contribute to the blog, please create a google/blogger account at the Blooger homepage and then email us to let us know you have an account. We will help get you set-up from there.

Cheers all!

Welcome to New Contributors

Welcome and a big thank you to Hillary (Thomas) Shaw and Mei Chee for becoming new contributors to the site. Hillary is currently living in Annapolis, starting a new business and serving a vital role as a class fund officer. Mei Chee recently, last week, relocated to back to Southeast Asia (Singapore) from New York City after getting married last year. She will be our first blogging contributor living overseas.

Thanks ladies for joining the site and I look forward to hearing from both of you!
Tiffany

Thanks and New Contributors...

Thanks to all the wonderful women who have written me with such great sentiments about the new blog. I am so happy that so many of you like the format and are interested in reconnecting with your class.

A few notes... An alum in China (Sebrina Somers) wrote to say hello and that she (and all others in China) are blocked from viewing anything on blogspot by the Chinese government. We are working to find a good solution to keep these women in the loop. If you know of anyone else who's having trouble viewing the site please pass their name on so we can include them our current solution of a digest email. A big thanks to Jessie for making our blog unique and beautiful! I hope you all like the new design as much as I do. Also, a super huge thank you to the women who wrote asking how they can volunteer (Erin Casler, Kate Cissel & Erika Pont) for the class. We have some plans in the works for mini class meetings in various cities. Please keep checking back for more information as those will be coming soon to a community near you.

Lastly, I want to welcome our first two class contributors to the blog, Audrey Tang and Kate (Gardner) Cissell. I know we are all looking forward to hearing from you. If you want to write for the class blog please send Jessie (jmrd@smith.alumnae.net) an email and she will get you set up.

Cheers!
Tiffany

a new look for our blog...

Hi 99ers!
Jessie the class web-mistress here. I'm psyched everyone seems to be enjoying the blog so far.

Today, I'm doing some updates, including doing away with the generic blogger template to give us our own look. Please bear with me - as I make adjustments, you may witness some funky-ness.

There's a few people who've asked to write for the class blog - I'll be sending you invites via blogger to get signed up. (Be sure to check your junk mail folder - the invite comes from a generic system account.) Any class member who wants to contribute is welcome. Just let us know.

Also, I've got an RSS feed set up now. Click on the link in the right-hand toolbar to subscribe. (It'll also explain what an RSS feed is, if you aren't sure - basically it's a way to get notification of our updates via your favorite news reader.)

And if anyone else has a website or a blog they want us to link to, please send the link - I'll be adding a sidebar with class links as part of the updates today.

Welcome!

Hello Class of 1999 and Welcome to our new web space!

Our new online space is beginning with this blog meant to update you on Smith events, news and class happenings. We would also like to feature class members as contributors and provide a space to submit your news. As events, fundraisers and reunion planning get underway the site will become more and more complex to fulfill our planning and registration needs.

Please add to the content of the site by posting in the comments sections. If you have a website or blog you would like posted please send me a note. Periodically I will post invitations for people to write "looking for" ads, news for class notes, and class event planning ideas. We really want to know what is going on with you and the direction you want to see the Class of 1999 take.

Lastly, my shameless plug for volunteers. If you are interested in writing for the class blog, hosting events in your city, have fundraising ideas, or interested in helping to organize a class initiative please send me (tdickson@smith.alumnae.net) an email.

Cheers and more to come!
Tiffany Rauch-Dickson
Class of '99 President

a new home for the class of '99...

We've been without a website for a while... so here we go!

This site is brand new as of February 2006, so there's not much here right now. Soon class officers will be here to post blog entries as stuff comes up... and I'll try to keep this updated with news in the meantime.