Hey folks,

I am in the process of setting up a listserv discussion forum, and need help
organising my targeted participants!  I work for UNEVOC, a UNESCO project
promoting vocational education in UNESCO member countries.  Our homepage is
http://www.unevoc.de if you are interested in more details.  The list (or
lists...if there is much demand, we will set up regional or topical lists)
is geared towards assisting and encouraging dialogue between registered
UNEVOC centres.  These are educational institutions and ministries
throughout the world, most notably in developing countries.  So the list
must be quite innovative, serving as an additional source of information for
UNEVOC centres (an email requestable file server, distribution for our
newsletters and other documents), a way for us to keep in touch with them,
but most importantly a facility to enable interactive, productive dialogues
to take place among them.

Logistically, this is an enormous challenge.  UNEVOC centres are spread out
all over the globe and I can guarantee that the majority of them have never
participated in a listserv discussion forum before.  We can't count on them
having web access, and email is also still relatively new.  So I am
approaching this thing with extreme caution and care, in order to avoid
overwhelming or turning off all these people.  I do not want to reinvent the
wheel here, and would much appreciate learning also from other list owners'
mistakes and experiences.  Is there anyone out there who has just done what
I am about to do and can give me tips or suggestions? I do know that I will
need to send out introductory texts in both French and English that are
extremely clear (even to newbies) and inspire enthusiastic dialogue.  If
need be I will write these myself, but am also open to suggestions here.

My general plan of action is as follows:

1. Send letter (in the next week) via snail mail to all targeted
participants informing them of the plan to offer this free service to them,
and request from them feedback, topics they would like to discuss and their
updated email addresses.  Send the same text via email to those email
addresses we do have.

2. As I wait for these to return (I am well aware that I may wait well into
January!  I am thinking, cut-off date will be January 15 before I hit
remaining people with a repeat letter), I will finish putting together the
list and begin setting up the archive for requestable documents.  The eager
first respondents I will ask to act as guinea pigs as the list starts up to
try out the various commands, request documents and generally trouble shoot
the system with me.

3. By the end of January, all participants with email who have responded
will be added to the list by us, and the explanatory welcome message will be
posted to them via email AND snail mail. This will ensure that there is no
confusion about the deluge of new mail.

4. The course of February will be spent guiding and encouraging the
participants, injecting suggested topics for discussion and gentle
explanations for how to use the thing. i am sure there will be further
troubleshooting and tweaking necessary.

5. End of February will see an evaluation, and an implementation of
suggestions and feedback from participants, especially newer, more specific
(regional or topical) lists if desired.

Is this close to your experience with setting up a list?  I would be very
grateful to hear your views, suggestions, experiences.  If there is a FAQ
file I need to know about that covers these issues, I would also appreciate
learning where to find it.

Cheers,

Tobias