Hey, did I tell you my plan for world domination?

So we've started, with four other area groups in the field, a "regional listserve" for relevant events and lectures. There's a webpage calendar managed by one of the Baltimore groups (to be updated quarterly), and my job is to manage the listserve (to be updated continuously). It's "read-only" for now, and I'm the only person who can post event listings to it, but any member of the four groups can email me to ask me to post something.

Creating this listserve today confirmed a few things for me.

1) We're all trying to capture the same audience. I knew that already, but here's the proof - upon setting up the listserve, I imported 576 emails - after having deleted at least 100 duplicates.

2) Centralizing effort works to attract others. That statement is not very clear, but basically within 15 minutes of sending out the announcement message, I had 6 emails and 2 phone messages from my members asking if various other groups could be included. Needless to say, we're going to do a second round (and probably more), inviting relevant groups to join. The combined potential audience of those suggested groups is more than 10 times the number of people we have now, as it would include several university departments. And that's just DC-MD-VA.

3) Sharing benefits the field. In fact, there's no benefit to NOT sharing information. Listing our events all together makes the profession look good, like there's a bunch of cool things happening all over town. In comparison, listing only one "own" monthly lecture just looks flimsy. And that's just the tip of that iceberg.

4) The pool of potential participants is so much larger in an instant! This is totally obvious - but, like the social hubs my fellow bloggers are currently talking about, it's not just about having doubled the number of people getting info on our events in round 1 of the new listserve - its about this new group of people with their own professional and personal connections having its own reach even farther out, to people who may have never heard of any, or more than one, of our four organizations.

Anyway - back to my plan for world domination. Which is, of course, to drive all these people to check out our website (listed in the footer of every post on the new listserve) and they will be so enamored with the fabulousness of what we offer that my membership will grow. And if I poach some of the other groups' members, well, such is life (and, as we know, being a member of one does not preclude from being a member of another!) Not only that, but I am perfectly happy to be completely transparent about this plan for world domination, because if my counterparts all do the same, and compete with us to offer the best professional community and the best services, well, once again that can only benefit the field as a whole - which of course is our mission, for all of us. And if everyone else makes it a goal to continuously innovate and improve, then it will be my job to stay ahead of the game, too. Which I love to do. Bring it on!