We now have members in the following countries
America, Anguilla, Australia,Austria,Belgium,Bosnia&Herzegovina,Canada, Czech Rep,Denmark,England,France,Germany, Holland, Ireland, Italy,Malaysia,Mongolia,Norway,Portugal,Scotland,Spain and Switzerland.
and we have over 100 members!
It is with great pleasure that I can let you know that our 100th member was a Honorary Membership afforded after due consideration by a quorum of Worshipful Grand Dragons to Mr Alan Lepofsky. Along with membership Alan was the first ever inductee into the "Teamroom of Fame" for services to collabortation. The Certificate was presented at the Lepofsky-Palooza
last night in Boston.
The council of WGDs will take any nominations for inclusion of others to the TeamRoom of Fame at any time you can nominate by email to me or comments on a GONAD news post.
To be serious for a moment. I was challenged both by comments on other blogs and by email that GONAD had no benefits, rules, objectives or rationale. Hmmmm there is some truth in that, the constitution of the order was lost (hidden) during a SOX audit some years ago and even if we could find it it probably needs to be updated. So I humbly put this forward as a prototype Mission statement for GONAD. Please feel free to come back with additions and or corrections or amendments.
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GONAD exists because Lotus Notes/Domino exists and we all use it on a daily basis. Most of us love it, a few loath it. We all turn up every day to keep servers running or write code to keep our users happy. We all get through the day in our own way but once in a while we all need to let our hair down and be silly with the people who share our world. GONAD is growing out of the fun that can be had doing that. Our fraternal Brothers in LotusBeer(tm) do exactly the same sort of thing . GONAD is just another one of a hundred thousand ways of having a bit of a laugh. Our objective is to have a laugh at ourselves, our users and the "opposition" and if we manage to raise a smile in others once in a while, well ... we GONADs think that is a benefit worth pursuing.
When any GONADs get together socially in real life or online their one objective, rule and rationale is to have a bit of fun and enjoy the fact that the world of Lotus from America to Australia and all points between is filled with good people willing to help each other at the drop of a hat.
GONAD encourages all members and non-members to find the time just once in a while to let themselves be a wee bit silly. If you can't make the social events at Lotushpere, ILUG, UKLUG, SNUG DKNUG etc why not make contact with other Lotus Folk in your own area and have your own 2 or 3 hours of geeky relaxation.
GONAD will never have another agenda nor an axe to grind other than the pursuit of a bit of a laugh. We all work in a serious world but it doesn't necessarily have to be serious when you leave
the office.
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Anyway there you go, thats as far as I got. Oh yes there are LotusBeer(tm) events semi-regularly in Scotland and England, and we have just started in Ireland too, if you are local you are very welcome to come join in most of use don't bite :-) So keep an eye on the blogs and on Planetlotus's events widget. If you want to have one of your own, put the word out and see who turns up. If you don't have a blog, let me or one of the other GONAD or LotusBeer(Tm) bloggers know and we will be only to happy to put the word out for you!
Finally I have found a badge company that is willing to do GONAD badges for members, something like Brother Theo's "Read My Blog" badges that went down a storm @ ILUG this year. More on that later but if anyone wants to submit a design.. feel free to send it to me :-)
Having read the above if you want to join in drop me an email or leave a comment.
