Introducing Our SOLSC Support Team

Please link up your slice of life story to this post today. As always, be sure to check out other bloggers’ writing by clicking through the links in the comment section of this post. If you’re dropping by to link up quickly today, then please come back later to read through others slicers’ posts.

Last month I asked for assistance with the upcoming Slice of Life Story Challenge from fellow slicers. The response was tremendous! We now have a team of volunteers who are committed to making this year’s March Challenge run smoothly. It’s a great group! Allow me to introduce them to you.

Concierges: Four members of our community are available, via e-mail, to answer general questions about the upcoming adult and classroom Challenges. Each person who is a concierge has participated in at least two month-long Slice of Life Story Challenges and has been an active year-round participant. Therefore, they should be your first point of contact if you have specific questions about the March Challenge. The following four women who will help in this capacity are:

If your last name begins with A – G, then your concierge will be Linda Baie. Linda’s e-mail address is lindab414[at]gmail[dot]com.

If your last name begins H – M, then your concierge will be LeAnn Carpenter (aka: Elsie). Elsie’s e-mail address is leannecarpenter[at]sbcglobal[dot]net.

If your last name begins with N – S, then your concierge will be Bonnie Kaplan. Bonnie’s e-mail address is blkdrama[at]mac[dot]com.

If your last name begins with T – Z, then your concierge will be Carol Wilcox. Carol’s e-mail address is carwilc[at]aol[dot]com.

A few contact guidelines to keep in mind, which Ruth and I will republish on our daily calls for slice of life stories:

• Each of these women are volunteering their time, but have other obligations. They will write you back at their earliest convenience.
• Please do not cc- Ruth and I on your e-mails to Bonnie, Carol, Elsie, and Linda. They are very knowledgeable and can probably answer almost any question you ask them about the Challenge. (They may also point you to past posts we’ve written, which will give you an in-depth answer to your question.) If they cannot answer your question, they will contact us on your behalf and we’ll send them a response to forward to you.
• If your link doesn’t post automatically on the first three days of the Challenge, please do not e-mail your concierge immediately. Most likely it’s being held in moderation since you either new to the Slice of Life Story Challenge or you included two or more unique URLs in the body of your comment. Ruth and I will be moderating comments every few hours. However, if it’s been 12 hours since you posted a link to your slice of life story and it doesn’t show up in the live comments, then please e-mail your concierge.
  • Sometimes comments, including those of long-time Slicers, get thrown into our blog’s spam folder. Sometimes this happens when you post the same comment more than once. Sometimes it happens for no reason. Please know I check the spam folder often and will fish out your comment if it lands there.

Giveaway Guru: Christy Rush-Levine graciously offered to help me with the prizes. Gathering the prizes, which I announced last week, is a huge undertaking. Tracking who writes on a daily basis, cross-checking the list at the end of the Challenge, and distributing the prizes is a monumental task. Therefore, I’m grateful she offered to assist me in this capacity. The people who win prizes at the end of the Challenge will be notified by Christy in early April.

Tech Support: The first few days of the Challenge are always busy since people’s links are often held for moderation and/or people link to their blog, not their actual post. Therefore, we have a team of people to assist us with tech-related issues. Our Tech Support members will notify you by leaving a comment for you on your blog if you linked incorrectly. They will also alert us about back-end updates we need to make.

If you’re participating in the adult challenge, you might hear from Amanda Villagomez, Beth Scanlon, or Donna Smith.

If your classroom will be participating in the classroom challenge, you might hear from Deb Day or Cindy Minnich.

The Welcome Wagon: While we encourage everyone to reach out to newcomers to help them feel welcome, it’s hard to know who is new. This team, which is being headed by Betsy, will identify first-time participants. Using a form (which I’ll post later this month) Ruth Chandler Ferris created, she will divide the first-time participants amongst all of the members of the Welcome Wagon. Each member of the Welcome Wagon will commit to commenting on each new participant’s writing every day (barring any unforeseen circumstances) during the Challenge. The members of the Welcome Wagon are:

Amy Rudd

Anita

Betsy

Carol Wilcox

Caroline

Fireflytrails

Julie Johnson

Lee Ann

Lori

Margaret

Nancy

Pamela Hodges

Ruth Chandler Ferris

Tara

Many thanks, in advance, to all of the people who volunteered to help us this year. I know the Challenge will be better because of your support!

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On a personal, weekly SOLSC-related note: I won’t be participating in the weekly challenge this week since my keyboard tray still hasn’t arrived. For those of you that don’t know, I had wrist pain last spring that resulted from an improperly placed keyboard and mouse. Things got better when I redesigned my workspace, but the keyboard tray broke a week and a half ago and I’m awaiting its replacement. Therefore, I have another week of spending as much time as possible off of the computer ’til it arrives and can be installed. (Thankfully this post, minus this paragraph, as well as a few others, were written and scheduled to post prior to my home-office mishap.)