And the Beat Goes on…
It feels like the Foundation is finding its groove. Our team keeps growing and with it, our dream is slowing morphing into a reality. We are lucky to have so many talented audiophiles that are willing to donate their time to the cause of making the world a more musical place. We all know the healing power of music and when it seems like every day there’s another tragedy, worsening climate related incidents, homelessness…it seems endless. This makes me even more grateful that we have our beautiful systems creating those magical moments when we can escape into sonic nirvana and detox from the crazy world for a few hours. This is something we need to share.
Back to reality. Our new dream team is busily working on several initiatives and expanding old ones. Our web team, Larry Deniston, Larry Gee and John Doumani has been steadily working to finish porting over all of the information from our old site and reformatting it so it’s more readily searchable and accessible to membership. They are also cleaning up our website so it’s more intuitive and user friendly. We are about to commence a rebranding effort to include revamping the look and feel of the website to more accurately reflect our mission and vision. We are working on updating our mission and vision statements as well.
Zoom…what was started as a stopgap measure to keep us together during the pandemic has taken hold as a permanent and important part of our Foundation offerings. Virtual meetings can lead the way in uniting audiophiles nationwide and worldwide. We are renaming our group the Audiophile Foundation (dropping the San Francisco portion) so we can expand our reach nationally. There should be no boundaries to our community. Our goal is to offer like-minded groups from throughout the country the opportunity to join the Audiophile Foundation and share events, knowledge and system experience. We would give these groups a leg up on organizing locally by piggybacking on what we do and vice versa. Running an audiophile group is a lot of work and there’s no reason why we can’t open up events nationwide. We’ve already started sharing zoom events with other groups and have members from all over the country. We have multiple board members living outside of the bay area (Hawaii, Salem, Portland, Central Point) and are open to bringing on more from throughout the country so there’s broader geographic representation and diversity.
We are already in discussions with a local audiophile group to join forces to expand our offerings to a younger demographic as well so stay tuned for exciting announcements on that front. We want to continue our deep listening series and build out our headphone knowledge base.
Hopefully you’ve noticed that The Muse is looking more professional each month. Larry Gee has been instrumental in cleaning up and formalizing our processes so our communication and online presence is as world class as our systems.
The RAM School lab is under construction. Tony Chipelo, aided by Ori Mizrahi-Shalom, Jim Hunton and Gregory Morgan, has been designing a new RAM school series of classes and is now starting to build out the school curriculum and the RAM school section of the website. We will report more on that in the future as it develops.
As we near completion on the rebranding efforts, we will move to the marketing phase of our development. As such, we have a new board position opening up for a marketing specialist who can take our organization to the next level and create more public awareness. If you have a marketing background and have wanted to get more involved, this is your opportunity to make some new friends, make a difference and have fun doing it. You can be at the forefront of building a new organization that will create enjoyment in so many people’s lives. We are also looking for an Event Coordinator to join the board. No this is not a wedding planner; this person would be the point of contact for all events to coordinate what events are scheduled and when.
Thanks to you all who have helped and supported the growth of the Foundation and those of you who will in the future. I’m so proud that our community has come together in a positive way to create our collective musical sunshiny day.