On 4 January 2012 21:31, Richard & Betsy Nunes <[email protected]> wrote: > As I said to you, we are amazed at the time you are devoting for the benefit > of all Goanetters and we both take this opportunity to thank you immensely > for all the work you put into this activity. Do pass on our grateful thanks > too to your wife, for allowing you to do this for and on behalf of us ALL. > We really do appreciate that.
Dear Betsy and Richard, I just rechecked, and confirm that I do have the permission of my wife to say that I'm very independent in all my (online) activities, including those which I do without her tacit approval :-) Just joking there! And thank you for your kind words. But the praise is indeed undeserved. Goanet, as everyone who has got tired of me repeating myself (including Cecil Pinto) by now knows, is a 17 year old experiment started by a (then) 17 year old Herman Carneiro. As an aside, we will not be able to say this 17/17 stuff in a few months' time. Because it was (either by design or chance) quite neatly stitched out, it runs largely on autopilot with very little human interference. Okay, the last statement is a bit of an exaggeration. But the "human interference" involved is not just one or two persons, but teams and the wider (invisible) networks. The volunteer admin members -- definitely not me alone -- work to keep the list running, and on track. Every single one who posts adds value to the network. When Tony Correa-Afonso showed up at the Goanetters' meet the other day, I (half-embarassed but also gratefullly) reminded him that he was on this network before me (sometime in 1994), and that it was so good to have him back after he missed an annual meet or two. Then there are modest others like JoeGoaUk, journalists who share their posts, and an interesting base of posters from Goa itself. They might not be formal admin members, but do so much to add value to this (and other) network(s) by posting so many useful links from Goa. Outside of the network, there are so many people following up so many ideas. Most of these you would not even guess, but since everyone might not know everyone else, in this hub-and-spokes model, it is hard to keep track. Sometime back, I had a separate folder called 'Goa Initiatives' in my email account, and was surprised to see how many ideas were springing forth. Some realistic, others far-fetched... but almost all well intentioned. As for my own regular posts, you probably don't know what a news-junkie I can be. As a compulsive collector, I've got tonnes of scraps of paper flooding a dinner table, a bedroom, and more. As my photographer-friend Lui Godinho reminded me the other day, even before the Net and the first browsers as we know them emerged, sometime in the late 1980s I used to cut-and-paste interesting articles and snail-mail them to a few friends. This photocopied job was christined "Newsclips From Goa". (In those times, the local press was rather restricted in terms of what it covered, and my feeling then was the more interesting articles emerged in the outstation media rather than locally... hence the attempt to circulate it. Things have changed somewhat with media competition here now.) So, Goanet should not be blamed for my own ailment :-) It would have anyway surfaced in one way or another. One criticism has long been that Goanet is on an island of its own, out of touch with the local reality in Goa, because it has been (due to the way technology spread, rather than design) so expat-oriented. That has changed somewhat. But still, if you read Goanet and the local media, you could feel you're encountering two different places :-) We need to get more diversity into Goanet, and that has been happening, though slowly, as more people in Goa take the power of cyberspace seriously. As Goanet touches 18 this year, I think everyone who posts or reads this network has reason to be proud of what it achieved. Even if it dies tomorrow (but I suspect enough people are there who will not allow it to), it place is assured in the media history of Goa -- even if I'm saying this myself. But we also need to think of ways by which we can become more relevant to Goa, the diaspora, and everyone back in the State. We need to think of ways to involve more people, be able to generate more content, and play a bigger role towards the goal of a better Goa (however one might define that). One thing that happens is, because of my frequent posts, people like me get the credit (and, less often, the criticism) even when I don't deserve it. Specially the former. But please don't take that to mean that I do the work. The behind the scenes work can often be tougher and bring in less gratitude. Herman (you probably know his folks from Kenya) is a low-profile guy in the best of times, so it is sometimes easy to float the story that he has no involvement with his baby, Goanet. Bosco, who is an enthusastic organiser (the Ivana photos of an earlier Goanet meet are still doing the rounds here) wasn't around in Goa this year. Avelino and Tony De Sa (whose ideas were very helpful in organising this year's event) have been helping Goanet, as have others in specific areas -- Selma till very recently in the summaries, Cristina with matrimonials, among others. Thanks again for your feedback, and for Dan's too. As for Dan's suggestion of a venue (Horseshoe), personally I am completely agnostic as to where we go, and which diet is preferred. As long as we get some space to sit for a little while, and we have a system by which -- in the true Goanet spirit -- it involves zero-cost to the organisers, and the absence of (questionable or otherwise) sponsorships too! FN PS: The main difference between the 1995 (or was it 1996?) Goanetters meets and the ones now are that most people were single, 30ish or less then. Now we're +atleast20kgs, 50ish and greying (or Godrej-dependent). If it wasn't for all the cyber archives out there (some of which we still need to recover... can any archivists help!) I'm sure we would have felt like cyber-RipVanWinkles! -- FN +91-832-2409490 or +91-9822122436 [email protected] Books from Goa,1556 http://scr.bi/Goa1556Books Audio recordings (mostly from Goa): http://bit.ly/GoaRecordings --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Protect Goa's natural beauty Support Goa's first Tiger Reserve Sign the petition at: http://www.goanet.org/petition/petition.php ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
