Many Hands Make Light Work

Today, a little over a year since the Transcript project was birthed, I wanted to take a moment to give a special thank you to the many individuals who have contributed to the Unfettered Transcripts effort, and without whose hard labor this transcription would not have been possible.

First off, I would like to recognize Janet H., Mary S., Ann Braun, and Tracy Ormond, who have been performing a variety of roles as needed, but always working regularly in the background, transcribing and auditing month in and month out as their lives permit. These four "founding transcribers" have been working since the beginnings of the UM Transcript project.

And no less important, but simply either newer to the team or of more modest contribution, I'd like to thank Fred Binchy, Loren Enders, Carolyn Bremer, Marc Clark, and Ann Hill. Thank you each for joining us.

If I have forgotten anyone, please forgive me and let me know and will gladly update my thanks.

I'd also like to express special thanks to Valerie Brewster, who not only helps coordinate the many transcript-related projects, but who has also shared her skills and expertise in publishing and proofreading the transcripts before they hit the web, as well as keeping me on my toes by asking the hard questions.

And last, I can't help but express my gratitude to my teacher, Ken McLeod, who has made all of this possible. I feel blessed many times over for these opportunities to learn and to serve all beings.

Namaste,

Jesse

Now There's More Then and Now!

Hello Listeners,

It's been an exciting few weeks at Unfettered Transcripts!

We had set a goal to finish two more Then and Now transcripts and have them proofread and published by our next Team Leaders meeting, which was this Thursday. had actually met our goal, but it took me a day to get them out to the web.

You can now enjoy Then and Now, Classes 1 and 2 in written format. We've also committed to finish publication of all 37 podcast transcripts by the end of 2010. At the rate we are going (we're going to try to stick to three or four per month), you'll hopefully see a few of the most-requested retreat transcripts as well: Monsters Under the Bed; Guru, Deity, Protector; and Releasing Emotional Reactions.

If you haven't actually read a transcript yet, now is a great time to start. I have listened to the TAN01 podcast several times, but in actually reading the transcript, I picked up even more. I had several of those, "WOW, this is just so painfully, beautifully simple! Why did it take me 30 years to find it!?" By the end of the transcript I felt like I had really received something wonderful, and I felt my world shift one more notch towards clarity.

Along with Ann Braun, who has agreed to be our temporary coordinator for the Transcription and Auditing team, I'm also getting ready to welcome four or five new team members who have experience with proofreading and editing, and a few new people interested in transcription as well. This will free my time up to focus more on the technological underpinnings of our publishing process.

We're hoping that among them (or any of you readers!) we might find someone interested in this process enough to help us with some leadership roles... the team is getting bigger but our leadership pool is not growing to meet the need! Please send myself or Ann an email if you might be interested in helping to coordinate the workflow at Unfettered Transcripts.

Speaking of technological underpinnings, there's been many great developments this past few weeks as well:

• We have now set up a development site for Unfettered Mind, where we can model new ideas and have the team give feedback before we "roll it out" to the main website.
  
  
• I'm working with Laura Trippi and the Taxonomy team now on several initiates. One is to help bring a special Google search capability to Unfettered Transcripts, making it easier and easier to find relevant entries to support your practice and teaching. I'm excited to be working with Laura on the "information architecture" which underlies the website to better integrate our transcripts with the podcasts. Look for some exciting changes coming down the road.
  
  
• We now have the times within the podcast itself available for each section of the podcast. This will help those interested in helping on the Audio Clips team generate their favorite podcast excerpts for sharing.

Well, that's it for February!

Yours in Dharma Publishing,

Jesse

Unfettered Mind on Facebook

Unfettered Mind now has a page on Facebook where Practice Tips and links to locations around the Unfettered Mind website complex are being posted regularly. Becoming a fan of Unfettered Mind on Facebook is a good way to learn about resources and activities that you might not yet be familiar with.