Focusing on alumni: names, then contact info

Here are the current priorities:

• Complete an exhaustive list of Co-opers through the years, contact info aside.
• Then, contact HAA and start grapevining to get the contact info.
• At the same time, prepare the bulk-mail invitation. Let's say we have this in the mail box by Sunday, March 2.
• All the while, keep digging deeper into the archives for perspective, abstract familiarity with these people, and tips.
  

Today was a big day. I did some major organizing of the archives, and i now realize that the yearbooks may help in reconstructing lists of names. I also found many, many more reunion planning documents than i had known existed. I'll go through them soon and see if anyone else left us a printed out blog... The postcards and letters that seem to have poured in is very encouraging.

I'll seek to create a second master spreadsheet that lists, flat out, every single person who lived at each house each semester. If you lived here for 4 semesters, you'd show up 4 times on this list, rather than just once on the contact info master list. This semester master list will be

1. overkill-exhaustive with regard to accounting for each person,
2. a good model for how future communication stewards should begin to append info to the database, (to be supplemented by also updating the master contact list and then seeking out ever-more current contact info from all alums,) and
3. a useful tool for networking (with a few button presses, one can generate a list of something like 40 people in temporal proximity to any given Co-oper, which can help to jog one's memory or produce a list of names someone can be responsible for helping track down through the grapevine.)

Perhaps it would be good to buy a USB key to store Co-op electronic documents. Paper is better for many things, including archiving and the Sutra, but this contact info is surely better handled using a spreadsheet. Archived emails and digital photographs might be stored on the USB key as well.

I wrote back to some alums today. Responses to the initial email sent from dudley.coop@gmail.com were few, but they've now been addressed. There is also the dudcoop@hcs.harvard.edu address that's been languishing in neglect for over a year now. A few proactive alums anticipated the 50th Reunion event and wrote to us at the latter address expressing a willingness to help, MONTHS ago, and we weren't there to listen!! Argh. They're wonderful though, and i'm working on reestablishing contact, hoping they're still excited to help.

Co-op superstars Frisbay and Alex Kaufman turn out to be in the Boston area and willing to help in various degrees! Perhaps they'll come to a dinner meeting next week, along with SJ. Amelia Kaplan has not responded yet, but in theory she is receiving our email conversations.

Another thing that occurred to me today is: publicity. Co-oper Eva Rosenberg's father edits Harvard Alumni Magazine. In addition to him, we should get the Gazette and Crimson to write stuff. And Alexandra Monti is supposed to put a note about our event in the Reunion Week bulletin that will detail the schedule to alumni. But who else? We should milk this opportunity for all it's worth to the Co-op's long-term security.

More tomorrow...