by Vicki Reich, Executive Director Provender Alliance
You hold in your virtual hands the first ever digital version of the Provender e-Journal. The Provender Journal has been educating and inspiring our membership for the last 34 years. As long-time members know, the paper Journal has been the place where members can share information on a wide range of topics from day-to-day struggles to the latest issues impacting our industry. Going digital is not going to change the underlying principals of the Journal, it’s going to enhance them.
I am really excited about the move to a digital format for many of reasons and here are my top five:
- We can share the information in the e-Journal quickly and easily. There are share buttons at the top and bottom of every article so if you read something you think someone else will benefit from, sending it to them is just a click away.
- We can include full color images and even videos. Using color images in the print version was cost prohibitive but the sky’s the limit with digital.
- You can actually click on links in the articles! We printed lots of links in the paper version but who has time to type in those long URLs? Now you can find out more about the contributors and other information they include in their articles with just a click.
- We save trees and lower our carbon footprint by not mailing out hundreds of pounds of paper.
- You can quickly find out more about our member advertisers and support Provender by supporting them.
For years, the Journal was a benefit of membership in Provender Alliance. Only members received the paper copy. The new e-Journal is available to everyone but only members are able to contribute content and to advertise. That is a big benefit to being a Provender member. Your content and links to your businesses will now be seen by many more people, not just current members. I encourage you to think about submitting articles to let members and others know what your business is learning and doing. I love the fact that Melissa Elkins from Community Food Co-op in Bellingham could travel across the country for all of us and report back on what she found at the Smart Chicken farm and production facility. If your business has a story to share, please send it my way.
There’s one last very important topic I want to cover before you go peruse the other articles in this edition and that is Member News. The Member News section of the paper Journal was the most read section. It has a new life in the digital world. It has its own tab on the website. Members can send in their news as it happens and we will post it right here. You can check to see what your fellow members are up to anytime, no need to wait until the end of the quarter. We send out links to fresh news every week and will have a link to all the Member News posts in the e-Journal announcement email. Members, send me your News!
The e-Journal will be published quarterly (March, June, September, and December) and will “live” on our website. We will send out an e-mail announcement, just like the one that lead you here, to let you know when all the articles have been posted. (If you found this article some other way besides in an e-mail, you can sign up for all our e-news by clicking on the sign-up button above). If you have any suggestions, comments, criticisms, or approbations about the new format, I want to hear them. Please send them my way.
Happy Holiday!