Friday, March 28, 2014
New Classmate Updates, Messages Being Sent
As we come closer to the reunion date, keep an eye on your email inbox and Facebook messages. We hope to contact as many classmates as possible. Two more updates arrived today and an additional ticket was sold. Join in the fun -- send your update on the Registration page and Buy Tickets today!
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Ticket Sales need a boost -- Get yours today!
The countdown continues toward our Timberline Ten Year -- only 79 days remain. We need your help to make this event a reality. Have you purchased a ticket? Now is the time to act! Without ticket sales, we cannot continue planning because we lack funds to book the food, music, and venue. What's stopping you? The admission price is small, and the potential for great memories is immense. Here is a note from our reunion committee asking for your help:
March 8, 2014
Dear Classmate,
We last gathered at our commencement ceremony in what was still the Pavilion at Boise State in May 2004. On that day, decked in blue and with jubilation over reaching the finish, we switched our tassels, threw our caps, and began our future.
What adventures have you experienced since that day? Where have you gone? Who have you met? What have you done? Where are you headed? As connected as Facebook and technology allows us to be, nothing replaces human contact, gathering with old friends, sharing stories, laughing over adolescence, partying among peers, and commemorating our common history as graduates.
The time to gather again is near. A decade has passed since our graduation from Timberline High School, and we want to celebrate with you. You and your significant other are invited to the Timberline Ten Year Reunion on Saturday, June 7 at 7:00 p.m. in the Basque Center of Downtown Boise.
As the reunion draws closer, more activities will be planned, including family-friendly and group specific gatherings during the morning and afternoon of Saturday, June 7. For now, we encourage you to purchase your ticket to the reunion for only $30 per person. This purchase covers admission, catered dinner by the Basque Market, beer, wine, and soda (mixed drinks will be available for an additional charge), and a slideshow DVD. We also want to keep track of each classmate, so take a couple minutes to register on our website whether or not you plan to attend. You can purchase your tickets here on our blog.
At our graduation, a series of dares was set before us in the commencement address: To capture the night, to chase our dreams, to make the world a better place. Now we issue another dare to you: Come to this reunion. Buy your ticket. Book your flight. Tell your family and friends you are coming home. Bring your spouse. Revel in the past. Look toward the future. Do not miss out on our Timberline Ten Year.
Sincerely,
Courtney LeHosit (Conner), Daniel Miller, and Ben Rosenthal
Your Reunion Committee Chairs
March 8, 2014
Dear Classmate,
We last gathered at our commencement ceremony in what was still the Pavilion at Boise State in May 2004. On that day, decked in blue and with jubilation over reaching the finish, we switched our tassels, threw our caps, and began our future.
What adventures have you experienced since that day? Where have you gone? Who have you met? What have you done? Where are you headed? As connected as Facebook and technology allows us to be, nothing replaces human contact, gathering with old friends, sharing stories, laughing over adolescence, partying among peers, and commemorating our common history as graduates.
The time to gather again is near. A decade has passed since our graduation from Timberline High School, and we want to celebrate with you. You and your significant other are invited to the Timberline Ten Year Reunion on Saturday, June 7 at 7:00 p.m. in the Basque Center of Downtown Boise.
As the reunion draws closer, more activities will be planned, including family-friendly and group specific gatherings during the morning and afternoon of Saturday, June 7. For now, we encourage you to purchase your ticket to the reunion for only $30 per person. This purchase covers admission, catered dinner by the Basque Market, beer, wine, and soda (mixed drinks will be available for an additional charge), and a slideshow DVD. We also want to keep track of each classmate, so take a couple minutes to register on our website whether or not you plan to attend. You can purchase your tickets here on our blog.
At our graduation, a series of dares was set before us in the commencement address: To capture the night, to chase our dreams, to make the world a better place. Now we issue another dare to you: Come to this reunion. Buy your ticket. Book your flight. Tell your family and friends you are coming home. Bring your spouse. Revel in the past. Look toward the future. Do not miss out on our Timberline Ten Year.
Sincerely,
Courtney LeHosit (Conner), Daniel Miller, and Ben Rosenthal
Your Reunion Committee Chairs
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Guest List Up and Growing
Our guest list is up on the blog and growing with each ticket purchase. Nothing can replace face-to-face gathering. We want you to be there for our Timberline Ten Year, and you will always remember the good people, great drinks, tasty food, perfect location, and unrepeatable memories you create. Join the guest list by buying your ticket today. It's only $30!
Friday, February 14, 2014
How Facebook is Affecting School Reunions
This article comes from TIME Magazine and is written by Gilbert Cruz. See it in original form here. It's a great reminder that online social networking cannot replace face-to-face contact and the experience of the reunion. You don't want to miss our Timberline Ten Year. Tickets are on sale. Buy yours today!
Who got fat, who got hot, and is that old crush of mine still single? Whatever happened to that weird kid with the hair? Wait, am I the one who got fat?
Such are the essential questions at the core of every high school and college reunion. For decades, the routine has remained the same: a bunch of old classmates get together and catch up, settle (or renew) grievances and swap glory-days stories. Yet the ability to locate former classmates through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and, well, the Internet itself, has alumni organizations and other such groups wondering if the sun is setting on the traditionally organized reunion.
Take Kim Brinegar, who in 1998 helped organize the 10-year reunion for her class at Maryland's Arundel High School. "Back then, the Internet wasn't really that reliable for finding people," she says. "I had to rely on word of mouth, advertising in the paper and sending things to people's parents." For the 20-year reunion, however, she had a new tool: Facebook. Through the site, Brinegar was able to get in touch with tons of people she couldn't track down last time around, including an exchange student from Italy who flew across the Atlantic for the reunion last November.
Rather than turn people off from wanting to attend ("Well, smokin' hot Sally looks just awful now — no need for me to go"), Facebook only increased the excitement for the 20th reunion at Massachusetts' Sharon High School, says Holly Goshin, who helped plan the event. "It's enticing. It's like a little preview, seeing everyone's life online. And whether you're happy that someone is not doing as well as you or you're happy that they look amazing, you get to see it all in person. Then you can move on with your life."
But such self-organization is hurting businesses devoted to reunions, says Jonathan Miller, co-owner of Reunited Inc., a 20-year-old company that has helped plan more than 1,000 high school reunions. "It's definitely affected our business," Miller says. "Classes can now easily say to me, 'Jonathan, we have 150 people in our Facebook group right now, and we really don't need your services.' "
College-alumni associations are dealing with the same issues. "Students now are all connected through Facebook and MySpace and other sites, so they leave college with their own network completely intact," says Deborah Dietzler, executive director of alumni relations at the University of Georgia. "This is not like 20 years ago, where, if you wanted to get in touch with someone, you kind of needed to call the alumni office."
On a personal level, Dietzler is a good example of how Facebook can hurt reunion attendance. "There was a Facebook page for my 20-year college reunion, which took place this May," she says. "I looked at it a couple of times and it didn't seem like anyone I knew would be there, so I lost interest."
Still, the idea that social-networking sites might kill reunions is a faulty one, because that would essentially mean killing nostalgia itself. While Facebook allows you to easily discover that your old pal Jack now has twins, it does not allow you to knock back a drink with Jack at your old campus dive (unless it's a virtual drink, and where's the fun in that?). What the Internet is doing is shifting power from schools to former students. There's less need for snail-mail brochures and impersonal e-mails from alumni offices and businesses like Reunited Inc. when any former student can just form a reunion group on Facebook.
Marc Dizon was a class officer for Virginia's West Springfield High class of 1999. Nine or so years later, dozens of former classmates began to e-mail him via Facebook to ask if a reunion was going to happen. The interest was there. "I don't think reunions are redundant on account of social media," he says. "You're always going to want to see people face to face. And those who don't go are probably those who wouldn't have gone even if there was no Facebook."
Mike Huynh, who helped organize a reunion for his 1998 Lowell High School class in San Francisco, says the gathering — which 214 out of about 600 class members attended — might not have happened if it weren't for Facebook. "It made it very cheap for us to connect quickly with classmates and get information out to them. It was also easy to get feedback on what dates students prefer and, afterwards, on how the event went. I think that five years from now, the popularity of Facebook is going to make it an even more effective way to get people together."
So reunions are probably here to stay, says Andrew Shaindlin, executive director of the Caltech Alumni Association and a blogger at Alumni Futures. But the real danger is that an end to reunions organized by alumni associations would make it more difficult for those associations to raise funds from former students. "It's going to affect donations," says Shaindlin. "We've lost our monopoly over the data on how to communicate with schoolmates. We need to step back and figure out how to remain relevant, because there may be some point three or five or seven years from now when we're going to hold a reunion and almost nobody is going to sign up." By then, however, alumni associations may have figured out how to tap donors via Facebook.
Who got fat, who got hot, and is that old crush of mine still single? Whatever happened to that weird kid with the hair? Wait, am I the one who got fat?
Such are the essential questions at the core of every high school and college reunion. For decades, the routine has remained the same: a bunch of old classmates get together and catch up, settle (or renew) grievances and swap glory-days stories. Yet the ability to locate former classmates through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and, well, the Internet itself, has alumni organizations and other such groups wondering if the sun is setting on the traditionally organized reunion.
Take Kim Brinegar, who in 1998 helped organize the 10-year reunion for her class at Maryland's Arundel High School. "Back then, the Internet wasn't really that reliable for finding people," she says. "I had to rely on word of mouth, advertising in the paper and sending things to people's parents." For the 20-year reunion, however, she had a new tool: Facebook. Through the site, Brinegar was able to get in touch with tons of people she couldn't track down last time around, including an exchange student from Italy who flew across the Atlantic for the reunion last November.
Rather than turn people off from wanting to attend ("Well, smokin' hot Sally looks just awful now — no need for me to go"), Facebook only increased the excitement for the 20th reunion at Massachusetts' Sharon High School, says Holly Goshin, who helped plan the event. "It's enticing. It's like a little preview, seeing everyone's life online. And whether you're happy that someone is not doing as well as you or you're happy that they look amazing, you get to see it all in person. Then you can move on with your life."
But such self-organization is hurting businesses devoted to reunions, says Jonathan Miller, co-owner of Reunited Inc., a 20-year-old company that has helped plan more than 1,000 high school reunions. "It's definitely affected our business," Miller says. "Classes can now easily say to me, 'Jonathan, we have 150 people in our Facebook group right now, and we really don't need your services.' "
College-alumni associations are dealing with the same issues. "Students now are all connected through Facebook and MySpace and other sites, so they leave college with their own network completely intact," says Deborah Dietzler, executive director of alumni relations at the University of Georgia. "This is not like 20 years ago, where, if you wanted to get in touch with someone, you kind of needed to call the alumni office."
On a personal level, Dietzler is a good example of how Facebook can hurt reunion attendance. "There was a Facebook page for my 20-year college reunion, which took place this May," she says. "I looked at it a couple of times and it didn't seem like anyone I knew would be there, so I lost interest."
Still, the idea that social-networking sites might kill reunions is a faulty one, because that would essentially mean killing nostalgia itself. While Facebook allows you to easily discover that your old pal Jack now has twins, it does not allow you to knock back a drink with Jack at your old campus dive (unless it's a virtual drink, and where's the fun in that?). What the Internet is doing is shifting power from schools to former students. There's less need for snail-mail brochures and impersonal e-mails from alumni offices and businesses like Reunited Inc. when any former student can just form a reunion group on Facebook.
Marc Dizon was a class officer for Virginia's West Springfield High class of 1999. Nine or so years later, dozens of former classmates began to e-mail him via Facebook to ask if a reunion was going to happen. The interest was there. "I don't think reunions are redundant on account of social media," he says. "You're always going to want to see people face to face. And those who don't go are probably those who wouldn't have gone even if there was no Facebook."
Mike Huynh, who helped organize a reunion for his 1998 Lowell High School class in San Francisco, says the gathering — which 214 out of about 600 class members attended — might not have happened if it weren't for Facebook. "It made it very cheap for us to connect quickly with classmates and get information out to them. It was also easy to get feedback on what dates students prefer and, afterwards, on how the event went. I think that five years from now, the popularity of Facebook is going to make it an even more effective way to get people together."
So reunions are probably here to stay, says Andrew Shaindlin, executive director of the Caltech Alumni Association and a blogger at Alumni Futures. But the real danger is that an end to reunions organized by alumni associations would make it more difficult for those associations to raise funds from former students. "It's going to affect donations," says Shaindlin. "We've lost our monopoly over the data on how to communicate with schoolmates. We need to step back and figure out how to remain relevant, because there may be some point three or five or seven years from now when we're going to hold a reunion and almost nobody is going to sign up." By then, however, alumni associations may have figured out how to tap donors via Facebook.
Monday, February 10, 2014
Why High School Reunions Are Good For You, Really
Hear this fun radio segment from NPR about High School Reunions. They focus on the many awkward questions to avoid asking at reunions. The guest on the show is Clarence Page, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, who wrote this piece that got him invited to NPR. After you finish, set to buying your tickets for our reunion. It's only months away!
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Early Bird Discount Almost Done
It's almost February, and that means the opportunity to purchase a reunion ticket at the Early Bird rate is running short. Thanks to Sandy Louangkhot for booking her ticket. Now it's your turn. Ticket purchases are secure and easy through PayPal, and they only cost $30. Reserve yours to spend time with classmates, make new memories, enjoy tasty food, and meet at an unbeatable venue downtown. Your purchase helps our planning to continue moving forward. Thanks in advance for your support.
Now is also the time to send your update so we can add to our Classmates page. Courtney Shandera and Kelly Paul (Kee) both did this even though they likely won't be able to attend the reunion since Kelly is moving to Utah and Courtney is getting married on June 7. (Congratulations, Courtney!) What's stopping you from taking five minutes to let us know how you are doing?
Now is also the time to send your update so we can add to our Classmates page. Courtney Shandera and Kelly Paul (Kee) both did this even though they likely won't be able to attend the reunion since Kelly is moving to Utah and Courtney is getting married on June 7. (Congratulations, Courtney!) What's stopping you from taking five minutes to let us know how you are doing?
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
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