austraLasia #2017
Happy New Year - and a look back at 2007
EAO: 31st December 2007 -- austraLasia wishes all readers all God's blessings for 2008. And now for a brief look at 2007, and what the future holds.
With this final edition for 2007, the total number of austraLasia items for the year comes to 295. That is the maximum number in any single year in the ten year existence of austraLasia and probably represents the highest number that could be expected in any one year.
For most of the mailing groups involved (named after provinces, plus an 'eaogeneral', an 'sdbgeneral' and a 'sasia' group), that number represents around 25-30 items touching on their province, or on an EAO or SDB general theme. Some provinces had a few more, some a little less - and the South Asia group had far fewer items addressed to them this year because their own regional news system, BIS, has 'come of age' fully, and there is little point in duplicating effort - though a large number from that region still receive austraLasia to keep in touch with what is happening in our region.
The existence of a significant number of correspondents (upward of 40) in the region has been the most pleasing factor of all - not only have the 'old' ones hung in, but a number of interesting developments have taken place amongst which I nominate two: the increase in correspondents from other groups in the Salesian Family besides SDBs, and the number of young correspondents from initial formation. Both factors augur well for the future.
Two major milestones were passed this year: the 10th birthday of austraLasia in October, and, more recently, the 2000th edition.
Two significant technical developments have taken place this year: austraLasia can now be found - all of it - on Salesian Digital Library (SDL). This enables extensive search possibilities and long-term conservation of the region's story as represented by those news items. The second development is but a day or two old - the transformation of Bosconet into a Content Management System, but it owes its existence to a year's trial of a wiki austraLasia comment page which many contributed to - and can continue to do so. The CMS development has immediate implications for austraLasia.
For the moment, the '2007' link refers to the old Bosconet 2007 page. From tomorrow, 1st January, austraLasia will reside directly inside the new Bosconet-wiki. You may notice very few changes externally - perhaps just the addition of some metadata tags at the bottom of a news item to help with classification, and a different way of accessing the items online. We will stay with the email distribution, since that is what seems to satisfy the readers. For those who use RSS to receive austraLasia there will be an adjustment of address but you will be informed of that in the near future, and it would be sufficient to click on the new link when it appears, for your browser to begin collecting from it.
Finally - there is now a public Forum available on Bosconet, and it may be able to replace the austraLasia comment page. The Forum only went up today and may need some tinkering with before it works properly.
_________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com . Use Bosconet-wiki to be interactive. RSS feeds - subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/RSS/rssala.xml Avail yourself of the Salesian Digital Library at at http://sdl.sdb.org
Happy New Year - and a look back at 2007
EAO: 31st December 2007 -- austraLasia wishes all readers all God's blessings for 2008. And now for a brief look at 2007, and what the future holds.
With this final edition for 2007, the total number of austraLasia items for the year comes to 295. That is the maximum number in any single year in the ten year existence of austraLasia and probably represents the highest number that could be expected in any one year.
For most of the mailing groups involved (named after provinces, plus an 'eaogeneral', an 'sdbgeneral' and a 'sasia' group), that number represents around 25-30 items touching on their province, or on an EAO or SDB general theme. Some provinces had a few more, some a little less - and the South Asia group had far fewer items addressed to them this year because their own regional news system, BIS, has 'come of age' fully, and there is little point in duplicating effort - though a large number from that region still receive austraLasia to keep in touch with what is happening in our region.
The existence of a significant number of correspondents (upward of 40) in the region has been the most pleasing factor of all - not only have the 'old' ones hung in, but a number of interesting developments have taken place amongst which I nominate two: the increase in correspondents from other groups in the Salesian Family besides SDBs, and the number of young correspondents from initial formation. Both factors augur well for the future.
Two major milestones were passed this year: the 10th birthday of austraLasia in October, and, more recently, the 2000th edition.
Two significant technical developments have taken place this year: austraLasia can now be found - all of it - on Salesian Digital Library (SDL). This enables extensive search possibilities and long-term conservation of the region's story as represented by those news items. The second development is but a day or two old - the transformation of Bosconet into a Content Management System, but it owes its existence to a year's trial of a wiki austraLasia comment page which many contributed to - and can continue to do so. The CMS development has immediate implications for austraLasia.
For the moment, the '2007' link refers to the old Bosconet 2007 page. From tomorrow, 1st January, austraLasia will reside directly inside the new Bosconet-wiki. You may notice very few changes externally - perhaps just the addition of some metadata tags at the bottom of a news item to help with classification, and a different way of accessing the items online. We will stay with the email distribution, since that is what seems to satisfy the readers. For those who use RSS to receive austraLasia there will be an adjustment of address but you will be informed of that in the near future, and it would be sufficient to click on the new link when it appears, for your browser to begin collecting from it.
Finally - there is now a public Forum available on Bosconet, and it may be able to replace the austraLasia comment page. The Forum only went up today and may need some tinkering with before it works properly.
_________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com . Use Bosconet-wiki to be interactive. RSS feeds - subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/RSS/rssala.xml Avail yourself of the Salesian Digital Library at at http://sdl.sdb.org
