Happy Birthday to Us!!!

Hello, Challenge Community!!! (cross-posted from our Yahoo site)

Today is our Birthday, and I hope we each have a good one! :)

Challengers officially signed up in our Database will hopefully be
receiving Birthday Cards between now and next Monday night, and I
hope you all enjoy writing them and sharing the joy!

I would like to take a moment while I may to thank those folks on
this [yahoo group] list who have *no intention* of officially becoming Challengers
themselves. You are the observers, the promoters of A&S, the good
gentles who are here to act simply as resources and sounding boards
for our many and diverse projects. You may not be Challengers, but
you are most certainly valued members of our Challenge Community, and
we thank you for being here! :)

As of today, we have 158 members of this Yahoo group Challenge
Community, and 90 people officially signed up for the Challenge in
the database! We also have a *bunch* of local and regional
listserves going, seven Kingdoms have Coordinators, and we have held
meetings at Pennsic, Estrella, and Gulf Wars, as well as at Rowany
Festival in Lochac. Challengers come from 17 out of 19 Kingdoms, and
two sitting members of the Royalty are members of our Community.

The fact that all of this growth has occured in just the one year
since I had a little idea, and wrote about it in a few places,
honestly boggles my mind. I'm so glad we have all found one another!

My present to the Community is a newly updated website (which will be
able to be found at ArtsAndSciences50.org as soon as it spreads
through each internet cache, or whatever they're called), with an
expanded FAQ, and a list of Coordinator contacts and local/regional
listserves. I was hoping to complete an annotated webography of
resources on how to do good documentatation, but it just hasn't
happened yet, sorry. I DID archive and remove all of the technically
awkward forums there though (I'll post them in the files section
here, once I've tidied them up a bit), and I discovered that there
were *quite* a few folks on there who have not yet joined us [on the yahoo site], so
I guess I have tracking them all down as another project to add to my
to-do list!

Anyway, my hopes for us for our second year together include Kingdom
Coordinators for each Kingdom, visible representation for us at each
Inter-Kingdom War, and official Challengers hailing from every
Kingdom. Compared to what we've already accomplished, I feel like
these are more like predictions, than wishes! :)

*I* think we are doing a great job by our motto - "to learn and share
of our learning, to create and share of our creation." When I look
at the posts on [our yahoo] list, I see folks experimenting and discovering,
helping others find sources, both within our Community and beyond,
and I hear reports (and see pictures!) of works in progress, and of
them being exhibitted and entered, and even offered to others. What
more COULD we be doing to share our philosophy with the Knowne
World? (Actually, that's a pretty good question, and I invite your
answers!)

My BIGGEST wish for all of us is simple though - that we all keep on
having **FUN**!!!

Happy Birthday to Us, and ENJOY!
Albreda