We are attending several coaches meetings in the next few weeks and are happy to answer any questions you have.  The most common questions we are asked is “How much?”  (Free) and “Does the whole league need to use it?”  (No.  Any team/coach,  or parent for that matter, is able to create a team and invite others to participate.)

We hope you will check it out for your teams and groups this season.

“These days, camp leaders and family counselors say it’s an increasingly common dynamic. It used to be the homesick kid begging to come home from camp. While that still happens, they’ve noticed that it’s often parents who have more trouble letting go.

They call it “kid-sickness,” a condition attributed in large part to today’s more involved style of parenting. Observers also say it’s only being exacerbated by our ability to be in constant contact by cell phone and computer, as well as many parents’ perception that the world is a more dangerous place. For leaders at many camps, it’s meant that dealing with parents has become a huge part of their jobs. “The time and energy camp directors put into preparing parents for camp is now equal to the time they prepare children for camp,” says Peg Smith, head of the American Camp Association, which works with about 2,600 camps nationwide.”

A week or two at sleepaway camp seems like a great experience for kids and parents.  More than that seems like a mistake and loss of precious time together.   The empty nesters I know yearn for the time their kids were little and tell me how fast the time goes.

Janet, we are happy TownConnect can help parents cope with children away at camp and keep extended families updated on summer vacation stories and photos.

How has your family used TownConnect this summer?  Let us know!

TownConnect is an exclusive, private online service designed to help people organize their lives. The co-branded Wicked Local People sites will allow users to participate in a free and secure network where they can easily organize online communities, share photos and files, and connect with others.”

The move to Benchmark Capital was surprising to me as I always thought of Matt as the Steve Ballmer of Facebook.   Being early stage at both Linked In and Facebook, Matt is clearly in charge of the secret sauce of social networking.

I met Matt in August 2005 in Palo Alto the day TheFacebook bought the domain Facebook.com and then again at an investment conference in NY a few months later.  I think their traffic was a mere billion pageviews a month at the time.

It will be interesting to see if Matt is leaving Facebook at its peak or not.   Once a company grows to over 100+ people the processes, policies and Dilbert-style managers of a larger organization seriously tax the mind and soul of entrepreneurs.   200-300 Facebook staff are new to the company, new to their jobs and trying to find ways to accumulate as much stock as possible.   Must be mayhem.

Best of luck and congratulations, Matt!  Spread some VC love on the East Coast too.

Through the co-branded Wicked Local People sites, residents of the 159 eastern Massachusetts communities served by GateHouse newspapers are nowable to participate in a free, secure, private network and easily organize online communities of friends, neighbors and extended families; coordinate schedules; share photos and files; and connect families, friends, and neighbors.

“When we launched the Wicked Local network last fall, we wanted to
combine professional journalism, lots of community information, and lots of
opportunities for residents to interact with us and with each other,” said
Kirk Davis, president of GateHouse Media New England. “Working with
TownConnect allows us to take that interaction to the next level –
immediately.”

The Wicked Local network (”wicked” being New England slang for “very”)is a region-wide expansion of the prize-winning WickedLocalPlymouth.com. Today, there are Wicked Local sites from Provincetown to Gloucester, fromSomerville to Shrewsbury. While most are operated by a weekly newspaper, each of GateHouse New England’s eight daily newspapers operates at least one Wicked Local site itself.

The addition of Wicked Local People allows visitors to the sites to:

– Build and share family profiles, photo albums, and blogs. Links and calendars allow a family to organize everything from soccer schedules to homework assignments to social engagements - all in a secure,private network. It is what might be described as a “Facebook for families.”
– Build an online space for a community group, place of worship, or other interest group to organize online information and communicate among members.
– Organize a sports team, complete with rosters, schedules, carpools, and a list of who has “snack duty” at which game.
– Share news and information broadly with all registered members of the community or easily send information directly to a GateHouse newspaper.

In addition, special classroom tools are designed for teachers to provide a secure online environment to communicate with students and parents.

“GateHouse newspapers have been connecting people in their individual
communities for decades — in some cases for more than a century,” noted
Mike Ford, founder and CEO of TownConnect. “The relationship with
TownConnect allows GateHouse to extend and deepen those connections in many
new ways, and it allows TownConnect to immediately reach GateHouse’s huge
Massachusetts audience.”

In addition to broadening services to readers, the collaboration with TownConnect will allow GateHouse to offer advertisers highly-targeted online opportunities and to significantly increase its online advertising inventory. With current inventory sold out on some of the most popular Wicked Local town sites, Wicked Local People will provide additional advertisers access to those audiences.

TownConnect (http://www.townconnect.com) is an exclusive, private online service designed to help busy people organize their and their families’ lives. TownConnect.com was launched in October of 2007, serving the United States and Canada.

As part of the GateHouse arrangement, the eastern Massachusetts TownConnect sites now live exclusively on the GateHouse Wicked Local sites.

About GateHouse Media, Inc.

GateHouse Media, Inc., headquartered in Fairport, New York, is one of the largest publishers of locally based print and online media in the United States as measured by its 98 daily publications. GateHouse Media
currently serves local audiences of more than 10 million per week across 21 states through hundreds of community publications and local websites. GateHouse Media is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “GHS.”