Great point Ryan:
I hope everyone (who has clubs, groups and meetings with other beekeepers) will share the forum address with them. Having an enviroment like this is a double bonus - it gives the local members a meeting place and it gives this International crowd more members to share and learn from.
I think I'll make up a Acrobat Page with 10 Bee Forum cards on it - explaining a bit about the forums and its features, and maybe everyone can make these available as hand outs at the meetings or share the address in club newsletters.
If we never get another member, we still have a great group - But in the post on DO YOU BELONG TO A CLUB shows that many members here do - We have the ability to set up groups in the forums - both open and private areas, so that club members can write back and forth to their membership without sending stuff to everyone in the forum - that is a powerful tool when most clubs have a website, but no real means of communicating besides email.
That includes individual chatrooms too - all that is easy to create and literally effortless to maintain. The point is to make beekeeping available to anyone's desktop, with live and relative material always a mouse click away.
Good post Ryan - thanks for spreading the word. I think that Backyard Beekeeping is an important and necessary media for the survival of the honeybee. Commercial enterprises serve a real purpose, but the individual beeyards are hubs where the honeybee has a greater chance to thrive during these tough times. And I have learned that being able to communicate with others greatly increases everyones chance of success.