Letter From the Editor

October 2009

Dear Subscribers,

Thank you for your continued interest in Spirit of the Times. And a warm welcome to those who have recently signed up. This is the second issue of the monthly newsletter for the Georgia Chapter of the Zeitgeist Movement. There are currently 191 subscribers and this is only our second month. That's exciting! Please consider spreading the word to anyone you think might be interested. Instructions on how to subscribe are located on the GA Chapter Home Page (near the top).

Spirit of the Times now has a regular column called The Good Fight, created and written by Craig Lam. Craig is a very enthusiastic and articulate member of the movement. I look forward to seeing what he has in store for us. The premiere installation of the column is called The First Step and can be found in this issue. Excellent work Craig!

If anyone else is interested in writing a dedicated monthly column for Spirit of the Times, please contact me and I will be happy to discuss the details with you. There is plenty of opportunity for our newsletter to expand. On a similar note, if anyone wants to contribute featured articles, news or digital art, we are always accepting submissions of material.

Send your submission here.

Beginning with the November issue, I will be dedicating space for you, the subscriber, to send your comments or critiques about articles previously published in Spirit of the Times or issues related to the movement as a whole. This new section will be called Let Your Voice Be Heard. I feel it is important to allow feedback from everyone. This movement is our movement. Each of us should have the opportunity to give voice to our ideas.

As you know, Spirit of the Times was initially designed to be the local newsletter for the Georgia Chapter of the Zeitgeist Movement. I feel there is a demanding need for regular communication at the local level and this will only increase as our membership, projects and events continue to grow. That said, we have been approached by a member who has expressed interest in creating an international newsletter for the Zeitgeist Movement. The offer is being made to change Spirit of the Times into an international newsletter rather than the local Georgia Chapter newsletter. I have decided to let the subscriber base cast a vote. Do you want Spirit of the Times to remain the local Georgia Chapter newsletter or would you prefer we switch gears and become an international newsletter?

Cast your vote here

Spirit of the Times contains notes from the previous months meeting in Atlanta. Unfortunately we do not have notes for this issue as our September meeting never happened. A member and I showed up for the meeting and hung around for about 20 or 30 minutes. When nobody else showed up, we left. I later found out a member was there previous to our arriving but left before the actual start time. I also learned another member showed up about an hour after the scheduled start time. On top of this, there were severe flood warnings that day which I feel, understandably, kept most people at home. The date has been set for the October meeting. It is Sunday, October 18th. The time is 4 PM. The location is the Lake Claire Community Land Trust. All are welcome to attend.

The Atlanta meeting information is always posted ahead of time in multiple places. You can check our blog, TheVenusProjectGA or log into the Chapter Forums (see instructions below) or read announcements such as this in Spirit of the Times. I also send out a mass email to everyone who is registered on the Georgia Chapter website. I feel it is important to give everyone advanced notice as well as providing multiple channels of communication to verify the time/date/location of our meetings.

And speaking of multiple channels of communication, it has been brought to my attention that there is a lot of activity happening in Ventrilo, a voice chat application over on the global website. There are a couple of Georgia Chapter members who participate, but we would love to see more of us there. We would especially like to see members who attend the face-to-face Atlanta meetings be able to login to Ventrilo and relay what we discussed to the other chapter members who live too far away to attend the Atlanta meetings. Unfortunately, due to my work schedule and involvement with maintaining the blog, chapter website, this newsletter and various other projects, my free time for Ventrilo is quite limited. I will be able to visit there now and again, but am looking for a few folks that can commit to visiting regularly. If you are interested in helping our chapter this way, contact me for details.

I would also like to highly encourage everyone to tune in to Peter's Bi-Weekly Radio Address. Each two hour episode has been jam-packed with valuable information and announcements. This is a great way to stay in the loop regarding new developments of the movement as well as gaining a deeper understanding of the principles it is based upon. I have also created an archive page for the radio address on the Venus Project GA blog.

In closing, if you haven't joined the chapter forums yet, please consider doing so. I feel this is a great place for all of us to have dialog about the movement and coordinate and organize our chapter on a statewide level, as well as a city section level. Currently Atlanta has been quite active. But Atlanta is just one of many cities in our state. So if you are interested in organizing a city section of the chapter, pop in the forums and make your request known. We would also love to hear you ideas for planning the Z-Day event for 2010 as well as starting various projects for our chapter.

To join the chapter forum, please follow these instructions:

1) REGISTER on the chapter website. This registration is separate from your subscription to Spirit of the Times. It is also separate from registration on the Zeitgeist Movement global website. When you send the registration request, you will receive an activation email. You will need to follow the instructions in that email to confirm your registration. You will only have to register once.

2) Once you are registered, then you can LOGIN to the Georgia Chapter website. When you login, you can then gain access to the forum by clicking on "Communicate" (on the top navigation menu of the chapter site) and choosing "Forum" from the drop down list.

Regards,

Bill Z.