Where is Baseball Beth? (and related questions)

[rbowser]

Someone at the Northern Sounds Forum happened to discover, for the first time, this "Weekend Challenge" event, where Garritan users are given a short time to compose something on a given theme. Like most long-time Garritan users, along with new users, - he'd never heard of this before -

Here's the link:

Garritan Weekend Challenge

His thread makes me wonder about several things:

--First--where are you, Baseball Beth? I don't think you've been here to the new Forum. Since this is meant to be the MakeMusic community hub for Garritan users, we need you here!

--Second--Dovetailing from the first question - why aren't these Garritan Challenges posted here also where more people can know about them? I think you'd be the one to be posting those here Beth?

--Third--I've observed for awhile that there's been a pile up of various Garritan related pages, but as a group, they're disorganized. I hardly ever go to any of the extra pages, the blogs, tutorials, the weekend challenge page--because I have a hard time even finding them. Menus and links between them don't seem to be connected - Just now I tried to find the blogs again, but couldn't.

MM put this Garritan Forum together intending it to be a "unique place for inspiration, collaboration, sharing, learning, good will, and fun," to quote Gary G. It's still a fledgling Forum, with membership and participation only at a small trickle so far, but it's slowly growing, and will hopefully become active in a way similar to Gary's original Forum. - Footnote on that original Forum - It's still going, and remains the only place where most active Garritan users visit. Hopes are that more of them will start including visits to this new Forum in their schedules

But this Forum is isolated from the rest of the Garritan related pages. There are no links to the Facebook group, to Baseball Beth's pages, to the blogs or tutorials - It's as I said before - There are Garritan pieces here and there and someone has to be just unusually persistent and maybe just plain lucky to find everything!

SO - I'm not only asking where Baseball Beth and her Garritan pages are, but I'm asking for this Forum to be taken out of its isolation from the rest of the Garritan material at MM.

There's been extremely little participation from MM staff at this Forum, so it looks like it will primarily be a user driven bulletin board, and that's fine. We just need to be more in the loop! - and it would be good if things brought up on this Feedback Policy sub-Forum could be addressed a bit more frequently.

Randy

[Michael.B]

Hello Randy,

I have to say that I have a lot in common with much of what you have written.

When these forums were launched and having read what I interpreted to be an enthusiastic introduction by Gary, I too felt that Gary and Make Music Staff would take more of an active interest here.

Regarding Baseball Beth and the Blog. For me, I didn't so much expect Baseball Beth to be here that much, maybe occasionally but, as I see it, Baseball Beth's pitch is to take care of the Garritan Blog and Fred is here to take care of these forums. Just my understanding of Make Music's arrangements. Having said that, I do agree there should be more linking and sharing, however that may be done.

I also agree that there is a sense of isolation with these forums. It is also undeniably true that there's been very little staff participation here. Perhaps Make Music intended this to be user-driven forums although, if so, this didn't come across in Gary's introduction.

In recent posts I have read compliments of these forums; the latest writing of our 'professionalism' and a liking of our 'code of conduct'. Others speak of this being an 'excellent' site and how helpful and friendly we are.

We could certainly do with more support and interaction from Gary and Make Music staff on an occasional, but regular, basis. This would help immeasurably to maintain the reputation we have earned for ourselves through incredibly hard and time-consuming work and would even help us to make these forums even better.

Thanks for the post Randy and I hope this does achieve something.

[rbowser]

... I didn't so much expect Baseball Beth to be here that much, maybe occasionally but, as I see it, Baseball Beth's pitch is to take care of the Garritan Blog and Fred is here to take care of these forums...

Without interaction, what we have is several different Garritan groups, each doing its own thing in different corners of the web. The purpose of Beth's contributions has been to get more Garritan users involved online - and that's the same goal as this Forum. So the only thing that makes sense to me is to have these elements all combined into one big Super Garritan Community!

I hope to see movement towards that soon - It's simple enough. As you said, basically what we need are links on this Forum and at least an occasional post about events like Beth's composition challenges.

Randy

[Michael.B]

..... I hope to see movement towards that soon - It's simple enough. As you said, basically what we need are links on this Forum and at least an occasional post about events like Beth's composition challenges.

Randy

Hello Randy,

We are agreed on that .. and, I think, that we do need more staff involvement .. just occasionally but regularly nonetheless. Apart from informing the full Garritan Community, these would help also to alleviate the isolation that we are feeling at the moment.

I hope it happens.

[Rich936]

Hi Michael and Randy,

Taking Randy's advice, I will be putting this forum on my regular visit list when I am on the forum. Nice to see you two both here and active.

RichR

[rbowser]

...I will be putting this forum on my regular visit list when I am on the forum...

That's excellent news, Rich! - You will notice that newcomers who need a lot of technical assistance with Garritan, Finale, and MIDI are showing up here. I bet you'll be finding questions to respond to soon. It's great to have more help here at the new Forum.

Onwards!

Randy

[Michael.B]

Hi Michael and Randy,

Taking Randy's advice, I will be putting this forum on my regular visit list when I am on the forum. Nice to see you two both here and active.

RichR

Hello Rich my friend, it's great to see you here.

Thanks for calling in.

Michael

[rbowser]

I thought maybe in the wake of this thread we'd hear from Beth and other Garritan enthusiasts who haven't yet come to this new Garritan Forum. But this odd disconnect between Garritan related places online continues. At the Garritan Facebook page, in the last week I've put up two posts, inviting people to get involved here - But those posts just get buried, and with no responses. I don't get it!

Randy

[rbowser]

...At the Garritan Facebook page, in the last week I've put up two posts, inviting people to get involved here - But those posts just get buried, and with no responses. I don't get it...

While the Forum is still only very slowly coming to life, and there still isn't an on-going presence from anyone at MakeMusic, it was cheering to see that a Facebook post I put up at the Garritan page was finally directly responded to.

Arun Sol noticed my invitation there at FB for people to come get involved at this new Garritan Forum, and after sending me a message there at FB, he came over here and made a spectacular debut with:

"Writing for a pirate-themed video game"

With the participation of people like Arun, and the other Garritan community members who have gotten involved here, there is still potential for this Forum to become the hub of activity that the first (and still active) Garritan Forum at Northern Sounds became.

I hope people already here don't get discouraged, but instead, stay involved, get more involved, and keep inviting musicians and composer friends to this growing online community.

Randy

[Fred @ MakeMusic]

Hey all-

Good points all around. We will endeavor to get the forum more in the loop!
We'll start by posting links on the forum to blog topics when they go live.

cheers!