Its been blogger's block for me and I hate myself for not writing my blog more regularly. Lots has been happening since I last blogged and most of it is rather negative if I may say so.

In July 2004 I went about setting up an e-group for my buddies from school so that we could all be on the same page and actively stay in touch as often as possible. This actually followed from my having done a similar thing for my University buddies some two years earlier - by July 2004 I had some 60 people connected from among those who went to my old University in the Himalayas, on the University e-group. The growth in membership in my University group was rather poor considering that we had thousands of students in the University when I was there. Nevertheless the University e-group functioned like a well oiled group and it was seen by one and all on the group as a great way of staying in touch. That is why I went about initiating a similar e-group for the old school and it shocked all of us that the school e-group could grow so large so fast - by Dec we had over 250 people on the school e-group and in a year it had hit 500+ and in another year we were at 750 and today it is over 1100 people strong! People from all over the globe, from every continent and plenty of mailings and lots of action every where. I was so proud of the growth of the school e-group that at a meeting at my old University I chided my university buddies for not growing the University group into something larger! How wrong could I have been??

Suddenly the scenario is no longer as rosy as it seemed on the school e-group because some people realized that this is a very easy way of sending out political messages and before you know it the system is so severely vitiated that no longer is it fun to read the messages going about on the school e-group. There are always folks (mostly those with very little stake in the positive functioning of the e-group) who are going to use it for nefarious purposes and its nearly impossible to rein them in without using strong arm tactics.

I'm now convinced that e-groups that are larger than a certain critical mass will always be impossible to manage because of elements that will use the system for their own purposes. So, in hind sight, the old university e-group is just perfect for its size, we have never had a negative email there and it has always been used for positive purposes unlike the school e-group! I'm beginning to think I've created a Frankenstein here in the form of the school e-group! To conclude, I guess I must say 'one lives and learns'!!!