Networking the Internet II Embroidery Project

NOTE: Several websites are referenced within the context of this article. The author does not have any affiliation with these sites and is not attempting to single out or promote any of them. They are listed for reference only.

Bulletin boards provide participants a place to post a question where others can see and respond to it. Such boards are located on a website with open access to anyone who wishes to participate. Once a question is posted, others are free to post specific answers to the question. These answers will also be displayed on the bulletin board for all to see. The main drawback with this system is that the original question may languish for many days or weeks without answers, as others have to visit the site and search out the questions. Bulletin boards can be found on several magazine websites that cater to sewing as well as equipment manufacturers’ websites.

A variation of an electronic bulletin board is the email list. With an email list, a participant can post a question or comment to a specific email address. It is then distributed automatically to all members of the list. This ensures that you reach a large number of people easily. When someone responds to your email posting, their response is also distributed to everyone on the list. Email lists require membership and can be very beneficial, since all correspondence reaches everyone within a targeted group of people. This will greatly increase your chances of communicating with others. One drawback is that you receive large volumes of email everyday, as each posted message goes to every person on the list. Pulse offers an email list (The Pulse List) which is open to all Pulse users at no charge. More information can be found at www.pulsemicro.com.

Two other popular email lists are The Embroidery List and The Home Embroidery List. Information about both can be found at www.embroiderymall.com and www.homeembroiderymall.com respectively.

While many of the email lists are free, some are more exclusive and require a fee to join. Typically this fee is an annual subscription that entitles the user to far more benefits than just an email list. Walter Floriani maintains two such programs, The Fun Club for commercial embroiderers and Stitch N Chatter for home embroiderers. Information about both can be found at www.floriani.com.