What's been done so far...

Ok, co-planner Tyler Neill ('08) here. Sam (SJ) Klein has also kicked in plenty of effort as well, bringing his experience planning the 46th Reunion. We began writing a few things down as we did them, but the Co-op's record-keeping habits are not what they used to be, what with the ephemeral nature of electronic communication. (Heck, we don't use the message board or the physical Sutra anymore!) So, the hard-copy log didn't quite happen. Anyhow, here's a rough timeline of what we've done to date on getting this event together.

Early November 2007

• A group of Co-opers attend the NASCO conference in Ann Arbor and stir up their forward-thinking juices for the Co-op. 50th Reunion event is mentioned, in association with reestablishing ties with alumni.

Mid-November

• I happen to notice a small note from SJ about planning the Reunion pinned to a bulletin board in the dining room. Current Co-opers are not conditioned to look there for mundane messages, (mostly jokes or curiosities,) so luck lends a hand here. I email SJ, and the ball begins to roll. Begin to think about a newsletter/invite and getting snail mail addresses in order. (Co-opers alums have not been tracked for some years, so this is uncharted territory for us here.) Mention of postage costs.
• An email goes out to the Co-op list to recruit volunteer help. (The email list is our main way of communicating.) A number speak up, but I don't have anything to delegate yet, so it's a bit like a false alarm.

Late November

• SJ and i meet over dinner. We exchange pleasantries, talk about changes in the Co-op, and toss out initial ideas. We decide to meet again soon, hopefully with more people.
  
• An email goes out to a small number of very recent Co-op alums suspected of being within a reasonable radius of Boston, inviting them to dinner to talk about the event. Proportionally small response.
  

Early December

• The Reunion is brought up at a Co-op meeting. Awareness is officially raised. (Note: i'm on leave from Harvard during this semester, which makes me feel somewhat like an outsider presenting at the meeting, as if i'm bringing in this idea 'from the outside'.) With little details, that's about all that happens.
  
• The second planning dinner happens: just me and SJ again. We delve into the Reunion planning binders and scrapbooks, from the 30th, 35th, and 40th events. They're wonderful for perspective. We brainstorm about how what tasks there are and will be to be done, how many people we'll need to pitch in, and what needs to get done sooner rather than later. Contacting alumni is the clear priority. (SJ possibly hints at a spreadsheet of alum info...) We decide that getting in touch with Dudley House and the Harvard Alumni Association asap would be good.

Mid-December

• Another Co-op meeting. Armed with the preliminary task-list that came out of SJ and my talks, the scope of the project is made more apparent to Co-opers. Another request for help; more of a response.
  
• SJ reveals the spreadsheet, which contains nearly 1000 people, most of whom seem to be Co-op. The info has many holes, and the affiliations of people on the list are not always clear, although it's a great start. At first glance, only about 140 have email addresses, which are especially outdated. (Note: there are actually a few more email address in the spreadsheet at this point in time, somewhat hidden in unexpected columns, but we don't inspect carefully enough to realize it.) SJ says its info is for people through circa year 2000.
  
• We decide that sending a mass email before Christmas would be good.

Late December

• We collaboratively draft the newsletter/invite through the Co-op "Wiki". Holidays interfere...
• At another Co-op meeting, we tentatively decide that Reunion tasks can perhaps best be spearheaded by a Stewardship position temporary for this spring semester. The Reunion Steward.
  

Early January 2008

• ...and the email editing drags awfully...
  

Mid-January

• Initial contact is made with Dudley House: Carvina Williams, Undergraduate Coordinator. (Note: Dudley House has only an interim Resident Dean at this time, and she does not seem especially equipped to help us with this issue at this time. So, we go to Carvina first.) She is not optimistic about Dudley House having records of its students, much less those particular students who lived at the Co-op. Not just talking contact info—I mean NO records. Not completely deterred, i plan on meeting with House Masters. (Unbeknownst to me until later, SJ talks with Carvina sometime within the next few weeks and gets more encouragement than i did about Dudley financial support for the event.)
  
• Initial contact is made with HAA: Lauren Brodsky, "Assistant Director, Clubs & Shared Interest Groups (SIGs)". She explains that the HAA has a huge amount of info on alumni, including records of WHO lived in the Co-op, at least until 1995. (HAA relies on the Co-op to give it lists of its residents, and then HAA simply makes a note on alumni database entries "tagging" them as having been Co-opers. This apparently ceased in 1995, for reasons unknown. We are currently making a concerted effort to explore the archives, perhaps to be able to reconstruct a more complete. This is what i fall asleep fantasizing about these days...) HOWEVER, HAA will not necessarily GIVE us this info automatically. We (the Co-op) must first incorporate ourselves into a "Shared Interest Group", a many-month process, and then we will have free access to the Co-op-tagged entries as well as any people we can convince them were Co-opers since 1995. Until then, the best we are offered is a one-time printing of mailing labels, produced with a combination of the HAA's tagged-records and whatever list we can construct ourselves, (starting with the 1000-person spreadsheet SJ provided.) Overall, though, Lauren seems genuinely excited to help us connect to alumni.
  

Late January

• A third call goes out to the Co-op email list (sent while i'm in Missouri) asking for help in reconstructing a list of former Co-opers. Responses are encouraging, but still, concrete tasks are in short supply. (Retrospective note: perhaps it would have been better to delegate even fuzzy tasks, like "figure out who lived here within the past ten years?") (Personal note: i hate delegating.) From Missouri, i begin reconstructing a list of recent years' Co-op alums. Tutor Allison Kuklok offers the resident lists from the years she was around.
• I created a Gmail email address: dudley.coop@gmail.com. This will be used for Reunion correspondence and perhaps more in the future. (Note: the dudcoop@fas.harvard.edu address still exists but it horribly neglected. And Google provides so many other abilities.)
  

Early February

• The email/newsletter FINALLY goes out! (More difficult than expected to convert from Wiki to email format. Ugh, the Luddite in me says.) Ominously, a huge number of the emails bounce, seemingly because of broken email addresses. One actual email response right away...(two more come later, by the time of this post.)
  
• The Co-op cleanup and all-day meeting happens. We elect Rich the Reunion Steward. He is charged with the vague duty of coordinating Reunion planning activity.
  
• I'm elected "Historian," a reconceived Scribe. (Scribes as of late have been minutes-takers, and not necessarily diligent ones. They have occasionally produced yearbooks. There exists no familiarity in the current Co-op with the archive material. Also, for example, we have long moved past the hard-copy Sutra; in it's place, the WikiSutra has weakly served stripped-down purposes.)
• Rich and I make it our mission to have a complete list of alumni by the end of the year, to be gathered in the process of inviting folks to the Reunion. We'll also need a system to maintain the spreadsheet, as that seems to be the way to do it efficiently in the future.
• Rich, slipping right into his role, discovers the forwarding-address binders in the computer lab desks. We eventually figure out that one, (the red one,) was an exact printout of info in the spreadsheet we have from SJ, but that it also has handwritten additions from alums who have stopped by and been kind enough to update their info. Amazing Communication Steward Paul's binder also has plenty of additional info.
• We contact Dudley House Master Jim Hogle to set up a meeting.
  

Mid-Februrary

• For the purpose of quick and collaborative access, Rich makes the alumni spreadsheet into a Google spreadsheet Document. The binders' info is plugged into the spreadsheet.
• Richa and i meet with Jim Hogle. He has such a good number of suggestions, i've attached a document debriefing the meeting [[ATTACH FILE]]. The main points:
• He will help us contact the Registrar for House lists. He will check Dudley records for Co-opers and tutors/masters' info.
• He will have Dudley kick in $ for mailing postage.
• Dudley has 20,000 alumni, so we should stay Co-op-focused.
• He recommends we get grapevining.
  
• Rich and i follow up on contacts Lauren Brodsky (HAA) had suggested.
• Alexandra Monti (HAA): possibly can help us advertise for the event in the alumni bulletin. (NOTE: Current Co-oper Eva Rosenberg's father edits the Harvard Alumni Magazine and is willing to help, too! Whoa.)
• Cara Angelopulos (HAA): possibly can get us the one-time mailing labels (see above).
• SJ makes an effort to involve past super-Co-opers Amelia Kaplan (writer of the tremendous "Don't Spit in the Soup" Hist&Lit thesis on the Co-op), Frisbe Thomasson, and Alex Kaufman.
  
• I find out from the Harvard Yearbook people that we can get access to all old yearbooks and that the books distinguish graduating seniors, which might come in handy for placing Co-op alumni in their respective moments in time.
• Rich implements the Google Blog. Here it is. That catches us up to the present.
• As i write, Alex Kaufman writes back and will soon come to visit!...
  

In the next post, i will summarize what we think the next steps are...