These are my Plans and Proposals for the year 2000. Since ours is a group effort, I now layout my thoughts for your perusal. [You don't have to like them, just don't tear me apart too badly, okay?]

1. Start a Bower/Bauer/Baur webring for all our surnames plus those [80?] variant spellings. It will help us discover and get around to all those sites where information is kept locally that we still don't know about yet.

2. Get the GEDCOM project off the back burner no later than February.

3. Set up a Native American project. Our NA cousins have special research requirements that we need to set aside a shelf.....a room.....a corner.....something just for them. We do have Bower[s], etc. NA cousins -- though I'm not sure of Bauer/Baur NA cousins. Digging around will uncover that piece of knowledge.

4. Officially open the Cottage and get it publicized.

5. Get our own domain with a logo. This idea is bigger than anything I've come up with yet and I'm hesitant to unveil it right now as I'm not sure of the waters I'm stepping into and want to make sure of my footing here. But I present it in these proposals because getting our own domain means the Homestead's URL will change and the surfing public may have trouble finding us for a while till the search engines catch up. Yes, I can do a forwarding page -- but wanted to discuss this one with you before I do something like this.

Our logo is still in its creative stages. Dan Shagena, son of cousin Lisa, is putting his 17-year old self into this project for us and wants to build something special. So, it's taking a little longer than expected but the results will probably be worth the wait.

6. We sorely need a navigation bar on each page. This is going to take a while to accomplish because of the number of pages currently being housed. I think one with just the separate rooms might suffice. Feedback?

7. An awards program. We've received so many it's time we show a little appreciation of our own for jobs well done.

8. Improve the web links page.

9. Become a full educational resource. This particular plan is probably one of the most important ones I've come up because it deals with our Bower/Bauer/Baur, etc. children directly and all the world's children indirectly. They are our generations of torch bearers into history and we need to do all we can to help them understand the heritage behind them -- even though we probably have kids and grandkids headed for careers like robotic scientists or computer analysts, they still need that knowledge to appreciate who they are and where they came from.

10. Now Frank <DRWWHO> Lippy gave me this idea and he didn't even know he'd done it. For the Y2K project, he sent a marriage certificate on one set of his couples. We all know proof is positive. Since we're already a resource center -- [go to www.surnameweb.com and call up Bower/Bowers/Bauer/Baur/Baure, etc. and a host of other variants; you'll find us there], we can carry this just a little further. My idea is to set up a scroll room strictly for putting scanned certificates online. Nobody else does this! It would give visualization to our data, like our pictures do.

11. Speaking of which, the next idea -- a family wall in the dining room -- full of our ancestral pictures.....thumbnail sketches on the page with hyperlinks leading to larger views as in the medieval room. This is an old idea I'm bringing up to the forefront again.

12. Launch the Y2K project and continue adding ancestors all year long. This project is going to need lots of babying if we're to see the results we're all expecting. I'll need LOTS of help from everyone on this one.

13. Build the State/Country Project to at least 50% of the states and countries opened up.

14. My surprise to all you Americans for the August 5th reunion! This one will definitely be "with a little help from my friends!".......and your cousins :) [I just hope I can keep my mouth shut!!!]

15. Another surprise to all of you as my Christmas gift to the family and set for December 25th, 2000. This one's gonna be a biggie!

Bigger than some of what I've already laid out?......you bet!!!

16. Announce all new items on the bulletin board so the revisiting surfers will stay with us. I just hope this idea doesn't bury our current data for want of viewing only newer material.

17. Figure out a way to index every name in the Homestead so our search engine will work more efficiently. Does anyone have an idea here?

18. Find new spots to advertise the Homestead, keeping our site in the public eye. With 20,000+ hits in 1999 we're going to be hard-pressed to improve on that. A lot of people know what we have there now and will be looking for more data.

19. Get our family membership up to 500 by the end of year 2000. If you have any ideas on how we can do this, please let me know; but we have lots more cousins out there in the world who have yet to find us.

Since all this is going to impact on the whole family, and it's directly related to the Homestead and your data - I need to know how you feel about all these changes and proposals. If you have others, I'd like to add them to the list. If you believe some of these ideas royally suck green eggs, then I need to remove them.

The point is, here are a load of ideas to improve our chances of being found and breaking down our brick walls. Now, how many do WE want to work on and carry out? Keep in mind please, these are rough draft ideas. Any of them can be refined, and probably should be.

Discussion? Feedback?