[-empyre-] Heartfelt Thanks to Melinda

[Renate Ferro]

We want to thank Melinda and the other guests, and innumerable 
participants, for such a lively month on gaming.  We were also 
interested to see discussion loop back to this summer's reflections 
on SL.

First thing tomorrow, we will be announcing April's guests and topic, 
Wired Sustainability.

First, we would like to take a moment, on behalf of the moderating 
team of -empyre- to acknowledge the significance of the conclusion of 
Melinda's final month as an -empyre- moderator.   We are very pleased 
to be able to continue on her behalf, along with Christina McPhee, 
Marcus Bastos, Nicholas Ruiz, and Jason Nelson (with a new and 
additional Australian moderator soon to be announced!).

Those newer to the list may not realize that -empyre- was Melinda 
Rackham's genius.  The listserv arose as a shining artistic moment 
from her gifted psyche and developed, since January 2002,  into a 
tremendously substantial online discussion of art and technology.  In 
addition to leading the team, developing fascinating topics for 
discussion with a monthly core of international guests from the 
artistic, curatorial, theoretical, academic, and online scenes, 
Melinda personally archived the discussions and maintained the 
website portal for subscriptions, lists of former topics and guests, 
etc.  (all this while overseeing the art and technology world in 
Australia!).  This says nothing about the hours she spent to make 
sure that we could benefit from a stable server for this complex list 
(of some 1200 active members), which resulted on our being able to 
depend on the College of Fine Arts at the University of New South 
Wales for its server.

So, prior to beginning this month's discussion of "Wired 
Sustainability," we would like to invite you to spend the day sending 
along your thoughts of your important -empyre- encounters with 
Melinda.  We'll circulate any such celebratory postings through 
tonight   (after that, we'll forward additional comments directly to 
Melinda) and then return to the regular business of focused 
discussion on "Wired Sustainability" tomorrow.

Thanks again, Melinda.  We have profited immensely from your insight 
and leadership and look forward to dialoguing with you into the 
future as, we hope, a regular participant of -empyre-.

Our very best,

Renate and Tim
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