[mou] Minnesota Bird Alerts mailing list

[Chris Fagyal]

All,

A few days ago I wrote about an idea I thought would be useful,
especially for subscribing to with a cell phone to allow people around
the state to get instant alerts about the finding or refinding of rare
birds in Minnesota, analagous to the alert system that is set up in the
UK.  I got surprisingly few emails regarding this, but since my domain
has the ability to host mailing lists, I decided to set it up anyways to
test it out and see if people actually wanted something like that.  

I have set it up as mou-alert@avianphotos.org
To subscribe send an email to mou-alert-request@avianphotos.org with
the word subscribe in the subject line.  The message doesn't need
anything in it.

I propose the format for messages be as follows (pretty much what I
described in my previous post)

Subject: <Bird found>
Message: <Location> - <Date> - <Time>

Location should minimally be crossroads and county, or if an address
has been made publically available with prior homeowner permission, the
address and county name.

For example this weekend I was at the nutcracker spot.  I'd have sent
the following:

Subject: Clark's Nutcracker
Message: 20 Lee Circle off Law St, Silver Bay - 10/16/2004 - 8:35am

The aim for this listserver is solely the reporting of
finding/refinding of rare birds in Minnesota with as condensed a form as
possible in order to establish a quasi real-time birding network.  It
would have been nice for this weekend because Bob Dunlap and I and Chris
Hockema drove right past where the ground-dove was seen a few hours
earlier.  Had we known, we'd have searched for it.  This list server is
not intended for any messages other than those in the form listed above.
 I want something that people can subscribe to with cell phones/pda's
etc that will give them concise information while they are on the road. 
Mou-Net and MnBird are where the details can be posted.

I hope this message isn't deemed inappropriate by the list owners of
Mou and MnBird, as the sole intent of the message is to further the
information dissemination for Minnesota Birding.  In no way is the
message intended to try to compete with the membership of each
listserver.

Thanks,






Chris Fagyal
Senior Software Engineer
United Defense, L.P. ASD (UDLP-GSD 'til Nov 1)
Fridley, MN (San Jose, CA 'til Nov 1)
(763) 572-5320
(408) 289-3840 ('til Nov 1)
chris.fagyal@udlp.com