Why A Blog?

Tigers Against Diabetes is in a crisis. This blog is designed to offer an opportunity for the team to meet that crisis, and emerge better - and victorious - for having confronted the crisis.

For November, 2008, we are being throughly thrashed, although we have begun to rebuild ourselves to become more successful in the future. Now we need to afford the opportunity for a larger number of players to contribute beyond just those coins, but to extend to all the varied talents and capacities that must be represented in our more-than-900 membership.

It will look dire when at the first of December, we discover that four or more of our mainstays have left for other teams. That is, players currently in our team top 16 will leave us. That will eventually appear even more bleak when we see the margin by which we lost November's check, and count the members of our primary opponent versus our membership.

We certainly will miss both the coins and the leadership / competitive spirit, of those leaving - and I personally want to thank them for the great job they have done with and for us.

But - several things make the picture brighter in the future than it would now appear. First, we have already picked up a dozen players or more, just as prolific as those known to be leaving. So - we are not really losing, or even merely changing - but getting better despite those losses. That has shown in the fact that over the past week, we have moved from 34,500 coins per player per day, to now beyond 37,500 - and fully recovered all that we had lost at Thanksgiving as well. Additionally, the gains in overall membership have been substantial, so that we have a better base for internal improvement. Moreover, we have the opportunity to continue that same growth for the foreseeable future, and if enough of us pitch in to recruit, to expand that rate of growth prodigiously. As we must, for the opponent has a larger current membership, and a per-player-per-day rate of about 39,500 coins.

Next, the character of the recruits is changing somewhat: not only am I, at least, focused more on better IWON coin rankings, but I think that we have already absorbed the majority of our "lost" members, for I believe that most of them were early recruits to the team. As the Team Challenge has matured, there are fewer outright newcomers to suck into the team, before discovering that they are not a bonus for us. Now, I think, we can see weekly, maybe even daily, growth in our rates of coin collection, due to the new members.

Throughout this blog, feel free to comment as you please - except keep it clean - and find the issues or ideas that YOU want to discuss - or let me know, and we will either make you an author of the blog, or at least get that idea/issue published. Read articles, read comments, take surveys - then stick some feedback into a comment and leave that.

Something else: If you are an experienced blogger, I need some recommendations about pushing subscriptions or follows to the membership - should I, which reader / service, pros and cons of each, and so on.

Gooooooo Tigers!!!!

Update: perhaps time-of-day, or maybe everyone is resting for a fresh start on the new month - but only 36,000 coins per member, per day, as of 11:30 EST, November 30.

Update to the update: at 1:46 EST December 1, we are still at 36.000 coins per member, per day, for 931 members. I think that may jump up, though, when the several new members since yesterday, have a chance to contribute coins - which were likely limited yesterday, even though the members are in the divisors. I did not update the comparator for our opponent - too tired to care, since it is a foregone conclusion that they continue to thrash us.