Rochester Crafters

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Last year a fellow craft business owner told me she was thinking of starting a group of eastside crafters to get together to bounce ideas off each other, share resources, etc. and would I be interested in joining? Absolutely!

But the more I thought about it, it seemed ideal for a Yahoo Group. When I suggested that to my new friend, she liked it too because we're all busy and don't really have time for meetings. She wasn't familiar with Yahoo Groups so I offered to set it up and she said to go for it.

I explored name possibilities last fall but didn't really want to launch it until January. We wanted the name Me, Myself and I - since we're all one-person operations but that was taken. I poked around forever and ended up with the generic, all-purpose, self-explanatory Rochester Crafters.

I know what you're thinking - just what I'm thinking. Do I really have time for this?

Probably not but I've been percolating on the idea for months and still really want to do it. I honestly have tried to talk myself out of it, but I can't. I was born to organize. :-) So without any expectations, I worked on it last night and emailed invitations to 37 women business owners that I've met over the years.

One of my biggest goals for the group was to store a file that lists area craft shows and the contact information for each. Because I list my show schedule online, I get calls and emails fairly often, from people asking for just that information.

So we'll see. I've been a member of these Yahoo Groups before and they can be really good or really bad, in my opinion. Really bad equals total socializing with no real content.

Secretly though I must have high expectations because last night I dreamed I invited 50 people and 38 accepted immediately. Then again, I also dreamed the large table in the middle of my studio was cleared off and usable. Dreams....