IMPORTANT: to all on the Camelot Round Table list, and to all PayPal contributors

[Bill Ryan]

Dear All:

Please excuse this method of addressing everyone. It's just the easiest way!

Kerry and I have been blown away by the number of people on the Round Table Pledge List. We want to thank every one of you for your commitment to support what we stand for.

We have NOT been able to reply to you all. This is never an intended discourtesy. We were already swamped with e-mail messages and now we have twice as many. It's just not physically possible for us to reply to or acknowledge everyone who writes to us. We hope that we have never caused no disappointment or offense. Every person on the list is valued and appreciated here.

If a message is important or personal, please re-send (and continue doing so!). We DO both read everything we receive.

We also want to thank the many people who have sent PayPal contributions.

These have been our lifeline. Without them, we would not be able to do what we have been able to, and this Forum (and Project Avalon) would not exist.

You have been extraordinarily generous. It always moves us - whether it's a large donation - and we have had some (THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF OUR HEARTS - YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE) - or a teenager from Poland or India or South Africa or Indonesia or Argentina who sends us $2.

To these fine people who have pledged, or donated: we'd like to ask you if you can give us a hand. Many of you have written to offer your services in a number of areas. We've not always been able to respond to those messages, either.

We're now in a place which is like a small business start-up becoming overwhelmed by its own success and demand for expansion. As any businessmen and women among you know, this can be a dangerous phase.

Here's what we need - from people that we already know (and you'll understand the reason for that):

* A good administrator who can manage and co-ordinate a small virtual team of people doing various jobs - like those below.

* Translators (We are VERY behind with this. We have a LOT of unposted, translated material.)

* HTML editors who can create web standard Camelot pages with translated material from text documents, linked to the English versions.

* Researchers who can - for example - collect the extraordinary amount of hard, practical information that is already on this Forum and help us organize and archive it to the new Avalon site.

Kerry and I have to continue to do what we feel we do best. In the next few weeks we have half a dozen new interviews scheduled, and this involves a lot of traveling and time spent offline. But meanwhile, we're in danger of being swamped by detailed but important and necessary work that could be undertaken by other Ground Crew volunteers.

A great model is the Camelot transcription team, already fine-tuned and up and running beautifully. They have a co-ordinator - a member here - who allocates work which is checked and edited between them. This runs smoothly each according to their schedule, availability, interest and preference.

The system now works so well that we now have almost ready-to-post transcriptions, completed with a few days of the interview, that can in theory be uploaded to the web within an hour. This is a pleasure and a Godsend to work with - and is a terrific service to thousands of people out there. This, then, is our model for how we'd love everythng else to operate.

Do please contact us at support@projectcamelot.org [and put GROUND CREW somewhere in the subject line] - and we'd love to hear from you.

With our warmest wishes to all -

Bill and Kerry