The MyMonarchSpace seemed to be well received at the instructor re-hire orientation last Saturday. It looked like there were easily over a hundred instructors there. We sat through a bunch of policy and proceedure topics before it was my turn to talk about MMS.

I started by asking how many people knew what an online social network was. I’m not sure how many hands actually went up, but my impression was that the hands mostly belonged to the younger people in the crowd. The handout mentioned below was handed out which I used to remind myself of what to talk about next. My focus was on how the MMS could be used to help instructors promote themselves.

Our ski school director seems to be very much behind the MMS, although his focus seems to be more on how to use it as another avenue of communication. (I’m working on a “private” group in MMS for that purpose.) Hopefully the handout will provide easy instructions on where to start.

If even a fraction of the instructors joins the Snow Sports Instructors group on the MMS, we will easily have the largest group, at least for a while. As the winter goes on, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Snowboarders group grows even larger.

There was actually some applause when it was time for me to sit down, which was cool. I got lots of comments afterwards about how cool the idea of a Monarch social network is. And during the talk a young lady instructor interupted for a couple of minutes to explain her perspective on “Friends” and how if they joined the MMS they didn’t necessarily have to be Rick’s (meaning me) friend. Aside from making me laugh a little, her enthusiasm warmed my heart. Her trying to convince people not to be afraid to sign-up was a good indicator.

A warning did come from a couple of people in the audience about posting pictures of guests without some sort of signed waiver. That kind of took me by surprise. I had not really thought of that issue. I guess I was assuming a verbal approval from my guests would be enough to allow me to post their pictures. I am even inclined to think guests will be happy that I would want to post pictures of them in my own forums. Hmmm, we’ll have to think about that one.