What is next???

Well, next week is the week I've been hanging my hat on. All the group returned to their respective offices this week so Monday will be the first day they are back. I know it will be a little crazy when they first return but I to expect them to be more likely to be able to post and also for it to be more meaningful since they are no longer face to face with their "cadre". I'm going to spend some time this weekend sending out some "plant" emails to ask the people that "owe me" to do some work. I need to strategize how to best do that.

I'm a little frustrated because one entire thread seems to have disappeared and I'm not sure how this happened or how it is possible. I dont' know if there were any posts in there or not. I see I am up to 10 users that are registered so I'm happy some of them have registered now. I sent personal emails to each of the members who registered.

I'm trying to decide if there is something meaningful I can post in the bb that would attract all of them there. I'm thinking of posting some of the functions and formulas we discussed in class. I wish I had more weight to pull so I could have posted their test results or something but I'm not fortunate enough to have that role.

Maybe what I could do is to ask some of my "plants" if they think there is some meaningful information that I could share that would attract people to come to the board. I know going forward what I will do is post questions people email me on the board along with the responses and links to responses.

I'm thinking that Nathon's question about Excel Macro editing, is something I could post.

If I think of what I want my end goal to be, I think I want small groups of people interested in the same things, to be able to share resources and information and lean on each other for help. I'm not trying to remove myself from being the expert as much as I am trying to provide a place to "store" the knowledge I am helping people construct in a place which will help others construct the same knowledge at a different time.

I foresee that there might be a core group of "excel users" or maybe all of the trainees are excel users but only some are access users. When I post a message such as a response to Nathan's email about links to VBA editing sites, I would like that to go out to all the "excel" users. How can I facilitate this. I believe anyone that posts something in a particular "section" will be notified of other messages that post. I do also want to experiement with Outlooks' potential for discussion groups in the public folders.

Another idea I have is to post certain parts of the manual out on the site in pdf form so it can be downloaded as well. I've got my work to do.

Maybe I should send an email out to all trainees asking who would like to be part of the excel power user group. This is going to initially be set up for trainees only and it will allow them to post questions to each other they might have and I will answer them first and also it will notify them when any of us post something. I will plan on posting one thing a week. I think this is what I may do. This will give me a smaller group to work with and concentrate on. I will start by sending an email to all the trainees and see what kind of response I get.