THE URANTIA BOOK FELLOWSHIP
ADMINISTRATION WEBSITE

As faith-enlightened and spirit-liberated sons of the kingdom of heaven, you face a double responsibility ofduty to man and duty to God while you voluntarily assume a third and sacred obligation: service to the brotherhood of God-knowing believers. [178:1.5]

Dear friends:

The following is a brief summary of the officers’ (Steve D., Marvin G., John
Hay, Doreen H. and Avi D.) collective thoughts on the recommendations of the
Website Content Committee presented to the GC on January 27, 2006 . In order to
refresh your memory, I will list the website committee’s recommendations first:

1. The two existing sites ubfellowship.com and urantiabook.org should be
combined into one.
2. There should be links designed to accommodate the differing needs of
existing UB students by adding features for new readers, as well as for
nonreaders.
3. Add visual material to balance out text.
4. Develop diversity and a global perspective in both text and graphics.
5. Establish connections to a broad range of religions and move out of the
current main focus on Christianity.

An additional recommendation of the committee was that it be allowed to design a
survey to elicit input from readers as to what they like or dislike about the
site and as to what more they would like it to contain.


The officers convened a conference call on March 13th in order to consider these
recommendations and bring their consensus to the entire EC for its approval. The
officers’ conclusions are as follows:

1. On the matter of the web and or email survey, there is no need to wait.
This could be undertaken immediately.
2. On the matter of combining ubfellowship.com and urantiabook.org, the
officers concluded that, prior to a better understanding of what is technically
feasible, it would be premature to approve this task. The officers did agree,
however, that as a matter of principle, The Fellowship’s website should promote
the organization to a much greater degree than it now does and should put
greater emphasis on the reader community.
3. The suggestion that links be designed to accommodate differing needs of
readers as well as non-readers was well received. Technical issues and costs
need to be considered prior to implementation.
4. There was general agreement that visual material needs to be added to
enhance the text. This would require professional level design work and, again,
costs will need to be considered.
5. The recommendation to “develop diversity and global perspective” was
deemed too vague to be acted upon. While the idea sounds good, there may be some
pitfalls here not the least of which is the danger of appearing to strive for
“political correctness.” This idea needs to be fleshed out before any decision
can be made about it.
6. The idea of establishing a connection to a broad range of religions also
needs more specificity before it can be given the green light. The concept is
appealing but the devil is in the details.

I look forward to seeing all of you Friday evening,

Avi