Dear Xxxx:
I invite you to consider participating with me and others in a weblog focused, roughly speaking, on Canadian legal research using technology. I'm planning to launch the thing, named SLAW, fairly soon — provided I can entice a number of knowledgeable, interested people to contribute to it on a more or less regular basis.
… [H]ere's my stab at capturing the idea of SLAW:
SLAW is to be a Canadian weblog generally concerned with the use of the Internet and other technology in legal research and the management of legal knowledge.
It will make no attempt to be comprehensive — but hopes to be up-to-date and often in the vanguard.
SLAW is to be a cooperative venture, drawing on expertise from across Canada.
And SLAW will act primarily as an eclectic notification tool, referring readers to other sites and resources as they come to our attention, but will occasionally offer extended pieces that might variously instruct, meditate, criticise or provoke. A little light-heartedness in style wouldn't hurt.
I envisage perhaps half a dozen core contributors, assisted by any number of irregulars. Core contributors would post directly; irregulars would submit posts to me for checking. (I will manage the thing, unless someone else arm-wrestles me for the privilege and wins.) Contributors would post short notices about items that they've come across or notions that they've had likely to interest others. There would be no need to develop any themes across posts.
… I have the slaw.ca domain and would likely establish the weblog using Movable Type, but am open to suggestions. At any event I will make it as easy as possible for contributors to, well, contribute, though I suspect the people who join won't have a great deal of difficulty doing it.
I appreciate that everyone I've invited is busy up to their eyebrows, but that's what you get for being expert. SLAW would only take scant minutes of your time, I promise. If everyone in the core posted something once or twice a week, it'd be a going concern. (On that score, I should say I have no plans whatever to make this a commercial venture; if it should become popular enough to make some Google dollars to maintain the site, that's another matter... for another time.)
I have sent this invitation to those whose names etc. are listed below. If you know of others who might be interested and a good fit, please do let me know. I don't feel any need to confine core membership to a certain group. And I'm quite conscious of the fact that I have no women on my list and no one from most provinces. These omissions are due to my ignorance, so please help me correct it, if you can.
Are you interested? Can I answer questions for you? I think there's a gap in the Internet here that we should fill in a typically Canadian way — by group cooperation. And, who knows, it might be fun.
Cheers,
Simon
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