 David B. South, President of the Monolithic Dome Institute |
Monolithic Dome Conference
Images From Past Conferences |
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by David B. South
October 6, 2008
Who Moved My Cheese?
That's the question made famous by Dr. Spencer Johnson in his 1998 New York Times and Publisher's Weekly bestseller that he wrote to help him deal with difficult change. Currently, it's a question we're all struggling with.
Change and our conference
But how does this question apply to our annual, national Monolithic Dome Conference? Well folks, it's like this. We're seeing a lot of changes: Gas prices have more than tripled, the cost of airline tickets has flown out of sight, and hotel stays are more expensive than vacations used to be. Those changes have made traveling to a conference an impractical expenditure. And, if you'll notice, conventions and conferences are dramatically dropping.
Our conference
Fourteen years ago when we first started our conference, the Internet just began emerging. In those days, we were publishing our quarterly magazine the Roundup for 1400 paid subscribers -- not a significant number when your mission, then and now, is to educate the world about Monolithic Domes. So we initiated the conference as yet another tool we could use to spread the word. This year, however, we decided not to use that tool.
But here's the good news or we found our cheese!
Each month, www.monolithic.com reaches about 43,000 individual computers. The information download is terrific. People visit from about 170 countries, with 400,000 page views per month. Obviously, through the Internet we can remain in constant contact with thousands more people, located virtually anywhere on this planet, than we could ever reach with the conferences.
We took a poll and asked our members, associates and experts what they thought. Most agreed that we can be of greater service by accelerating our use of that tool we call the Internet. So that's exactly what we will do. We will keep our website as updated with information and web casts as we possibly can.
Our website
It's a great tool. In addition to our United States, we now have Monolithic Domes in 52 countries. The plan is working. Let's continue making the world go round. Let's see the benefits of Monolithic go to everybody. In our time of energy crisis and shortages, Monolithic Domes help dramatically. They are permanent and do not need rebuilding every few years. They are relatively inexpensive and their energy-efficiency is beyond compare.
Lastly, we are disappointed not to have an annual get together this year. It was fun for us as well as you. We will miss the jokes, discussions, jibes. But we still get them online with the Bulletin Board, the phone calls and most of all the emails. We're not having a conference, but we have not gone away, and we still appreciate all of your help and most especially your encouragement. Remember: Monolithic Domes are still a well-kept secret. Please keep disclosing that well-kept secret to your friends and neighbors.
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