Yes, it does give me details.

?

David and others - Thank you for pointing out the issues – and yes I have been thinking this through for a long while.?

?

Vocabulary causes confusion.? Mark’s decision to use the word “group” as the name of his service does worsen the vocabulary challenges for those of us who want to use a service to facilitate communication within an organization-cum-community-cum-group comprised of PEOPLE.? A collection (group) of HUMAN BEINGS that wants to talk among themselves becomes confused with a virtual list of designated email addresses (a group) stored on a computer that then distributes emails from any one email address on that list to all of the other email addresses on that list -- through the electronic ether. ?So I will refer below to my a “community-group” to signify it is a collection of PEOPLE, and to our virtual group on Groups.io as our e-group. ?

?

How will my community-group use the Groups.io service??? Our new community-group is named Praxis Pioneers, an informal by-invitation organization with strict professional criteria for membership that I establish. The fees we will charge do not violate my Groups.io terms of service because the fees cover membership in the community of PEOPLE. ?I will add members to our e-group on Groups.io only after approving their membership in Praxis Pioneers. ?We will simply use Groups.io for email communication and will probably create and use a website on Groups.io, too.? ?In addition to using the Groups.io service’s list-serv and website capabilities to communicate, we will use other vendors to market and host our webinars and conference calls, local conferences, etc.??

?

Why would people be willing to pay ME?? I am a nationally-known expert and “thought leader” with a reputation for building collegial relationships across stakeholder groups, for being generous in sharing my knowledge and ideas, and for being an innovator. ??I have run a multi-stakeholder list serv since 2001 -- and will continue to do so.? ?Many people have told me how valuable it is to them ??– partly because of the new stuff I bring to their attention and the multi-stakeholder dialogue that results.? ?However, that group has not had a clear purpose other than keeping ourselves informed and enlightened – and growing the number of people who think the way we do.?

?

Why would people be willing to pay a FEE to belong to this new community-group?? ?I'm charging them for a membership in a community-group that has a clear purpose:? We are going to do an unusual project together.? We are going to collaborate and support one another in developing the skills and assembling the resources required to manage difficult cases of a very sort – the small group of people for whom the traditional method of medical care delivery has failed.? There is currently no generally-accepted effective approach to “salvaging” these situations.?? So, we will be developing, testing out and deploying a new and quite different treatment model, practice model, and business model – each in our own settings – and sharing our experiences as we do so. ???This will enable them to market themselves as having special expertise in dealing with these problematic cases, and earn more money by gaining a reputation for doing so successfully.? Professionals are quite accustomed to paying for continuing education/professional development activities-- and they are ESPECIALLY willing to do that when the skills they learn will enable them to expand their service offerings, improve the delivered effectiveness of their services, look more "expert" to potential buyers, expand their business, and earn more money. ??I expect we will need to award continuing medical education credits to them to acknowledge the time they are spending developing their expertise. ?And since we will have to pay significant sums of money to the organizations that will accredit the medical education we will be delivering, obviously we must have revenue to cover those expenses.

?

Will this be a big money-maker?? ?Heck no.? But since the other faculty members and I will spend a considerable amount of our professional time on it – and we earn our living by the hour – we intend to get paid something rather than nothing. ?

??

How big a group are you talking about?? It’s fine with me if this group stays small, but it will probably grow slowly over time.? In fact, it will never be very large, because not many physicians are interested in mastering this particular subject matter.? I’ll be delighted if we ever get to 200 members – if each state ends up with 4 physicians who are willing to work with this type of patient and know how to do this stuff well, that would be GREAT. ?

?

How will the group be marketed / why would people want to join (and pay)???? Last year was the first year I taught a day long face-fo-face course on this particular topic.? It will be repeated every year.? Attendees paid several hundred dollars to attend.? The people who attended were disappointed that there was no way to stay connected and go deeper into the subject matter.? They expressed a real interest in having a way to keep in contact with me and other faculty, to keep growing their knowledge / expertise and to share their experiences as they attempt to implement the things they learned in the course.? The “graduates” of that course will now get an offer to join this new group.? ?They will not be fazed by a small monthly charge for an on-going connection to a community of mutual support.

?

Cordially,

Jennifer Christian, MD, MPH

Moderator, PraxisPioneers – tiny newborn organization -- e-group has 2 members so far.
Moderator, Work Fitness & Disability Roundtable - Email & online discussion group with >1,200 multi-stakeholder professional members since 2001

Go to and click on JOIN THE ROUNDTABLE to find out more or join us!

?

?

Matty,

Well if it really is spam, then yes, but it has to be the group owner decides what is . All too often folks get bored with a group, are too lazy to unsubscribe, start marking e-mail from the group as spam to remove it from their inbox, then their mail providers then ranks the group as spammy and folks find stuff in their spam folders. In the past before SPF and DMARK the mail could appear to come from the original sender, and so it would be just the actual senders reputation that was downgraded. Now e-mail from lists must appear to come from the list, so it is the list’s reputation that is downgraded.

?

If some one is really spamming a group then the list owner must block or ban them.

?

Dave

?