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Editorial:Looking back at a great year
I'm listening to RealAudio files of Nicola Guidetti's classical flute playing early on a Sunday morning, letting it transport me to a time before computers, cars, and supermarkets, to a time when traveling across the ocean was a dangerous, time-consuming prospect. I picture a sunlit room full of music being played by men in velvet knickers and lace shirts, women with high hairdos and hoop skirts -- and there I am, with my Walkman and GameBoy in T-shirt, shorts, and sandals looking for seashells. In newspaperland, whence I matriculated, the end of the year heralded a time to look back on the previous 12 months to highlight the best and the worst. Old habits die hard, so please bear with me as I contemplate the past year, from a Vienna Online point of view. It is safe to say that without you, our readers, we would have very little reason to continue to do this. While creating these pages is its own reward, that alone would not prompt us to gather our thoughts and HTML skills regularly at the end of each month to prepare for the first of the month deadline. We have had a steadily increasing stream of visitors and subscribers since we started keeping statistics, and for that we are honored and humbled and motivated to give more and better reasons for you to continue to spend time with the fruits of our labors. Inside Vienna Online, the people who actually make it pertinent to classical music and Vienna are my associates, Keith K. Klassiks and Florian Keller. Keith has been with the cyberzine since its inception, or very nearly so, back in 1998, adding a decidedly classical flavor with his insightful comments on the classical music masters and their works. Florian joined almost immediately after becoming a community leader in GeoCities. He added the Austrian connection, being a citizen of that country and having grown up and lived there for most of his life. Both gentlemen are consummate perfectionists and masterful graphics engineers and HTML writers who see to it that I don't leave a lot of mistakes in the issues of Vienna Online. We are in touch with each almost daily and sometimes several times a day -- especially during publishing times -- and have built up a great camaraderie and working relationship, despite the fact that we are in Minnesota, Hawaii, and Singapore. One of the biggest things that happened with Vienna Online this year was going to a monthly format. When it began in July 1998, the zine was published every other month. After taking over in March, we kept the frequency, but always put together two or more fresh articles for the in-between months. Finally it became clear that we had enough people submitting copy that we could safely shoot for a new issue each month, and that's how it has been since September 1999. We have had several great guest writers during the year helping us to maintain the supply of copy. Maurice Biron, Curtis Jefferson, Lauren Peterson, Benjamin Chiu, Josh Cullen, and Connie Sunday have all inspired us with their writing and ideas. To have others' thoughts and styles cross our paths is essential to our intellectual growth and to the variety within Vienna Online. In fact, we covet new thoughts and ideas so much that getting them has become a constant effort. We've opened up a new message board, explicitly for Vienna Online readers. Called the Konzerthaus Cafe, it is linked from many of our pages with the coffee-steaming graphic brought together by Klassiks (see the top of the page). About halfway through the year, CL Ashlee started our Vienna Residents Club (link below). It is open to everyone with a webpage in Vienna. If you don't have a webpage, though, you are still welcome to post messages there or in our Vienna Message Board (link below). In the larger scheme of things, these areas may seem rather targeted, and we recognize that. Luckily, within Yahoo, there are many other message boards to let your questions and posts roam far and wide. The link to the Yahoo! Classical message board is included on the Vienna Message Board page. If the VRC isn't your cup of tea, you'll find over 350,000 clubs in Yahoo! from which you should be able to find one to exactly match your interests. Along with the new residence within Yahoo! came our designation as a GeoPlus site, thanks largely to the efforts of Community Coordinator Lauretta Teoh-Lim. GeoPlus status gives us the ability to better serve our readers and visitors, not to mention the extra space to upload lots more sound files of various types and sizes. We will continue to look for quality ways to fill our new space. None of that will be nearly as meaningful without your input, though. Whether it's signing a guestbook, starting a debate in a message board, or just reading the articles we put together every month, it's you who will define who we are and what happens to us in the future. Thank you for this past year, and have a wonderful holiday season and a great 2000. We look forward to entertaining you.
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