Dear colleagues,

Welcome to Winds & Waves 2017 now being published in a new way - on Medium.com, a conversational platform that we think suits our magazine. Publishing on Medium allows us to have conversations with our readers, as well as posting videos and photographs - thus making our publication multi-media.

As you know, we used to publish Winds and Waves in magazine format three times a year. Now we are moving to a platform that allows publication of articles on an ongoing basis.

To make the transition easier, we have set a theme which we think is timely = “effective facilitation and dialogue in a populist era”. You will find two new articles to inspire you: Jo Nelson on ‘Facilitating Dialogue in a Populist Era”, and "A Plastic Ocean", by Mark Blackburn. We invite you to share your thoughts on these articles and to contribute your own article.

You can either (a) send your draft article to Dharma or Rosemary (see email addresses below), or (b) post the article as a draft on Medium; in either case, we will look after the editing and formatting so it will appear on Medium in the Winds and Waves style. (We have prepared a brief guide to writing and posting on Medium, which you may find helpful - it is attached to this message.)

Helpful Hints:
1. You can find Winds and Waves on Medium at https://medium.com/winds-and-waves/ We encourage you to visit to see what’s already on the site.

2. Once you get there, you can register on Medium by clicking on the ‘sign in/sign on’ link at the top right hand corner of the page. Once registered, you will automatically be notified when new items are posted on Winds and Waves.

3. You can sign in to Winds and Waves in a number of ways - by using your Twitter account, your Facebook account, your Google account, or your email address. The choice is up to you. If you decided to login by email, Medium will send a confirmation link to your email address, which you must click on within 15 minutes.

4. Once logged in (in any of the ways listed above), you can click on your icon and you will see a list of possibilities for reading, submitting articles, adjusting your account, or logging out.

Email notification of new issues
We know that it may take some time to get adjusted to this new format. Initially, we will set a theme and invite you to submit articles as a way of getting used to this ‘just-in-time’ publishing, and we will notify you by email when the new Winds and Waves issue is published. As we move through the transition to ongoing publication, we will send you a monthly note highlighting stories that have been published on Medium during that month.

We are happy to address any questions you have about this new method of publishing Winds and Waves, and hope that you will consider gifting us with your comments, articles, videos, and photos. You can send these to Dharma at pulai100@yahoo.com and Rosemary at rxc102@gmail.com.

We would greatly appreciate your support in sharing this information widely. Please do forward this invitation and the link to Winds and Waves to your colleagues who may be interested.

Regards,
Dharma, Peter, Roma, Isabel, Robyn