Olin Family Society

We have a few dozen site members now. That's a good start, but we'd like to have more. After all, we have a large extended OLIN family with over 600 known addresses and thousands more unknown (to me, anyway).

Just having an account isn't enough. After all, what's the point of signing up for an account if you never use it? If only a handful of people are going to post, then we could simply do away with account registrations and create accounts for just those people who request them.

The reason I set up this site the way it is was so that all of you could interact with your cousins, share your family history, plan reunions, and so on. So, my question to all of you is this: Why aren't you participating on this site? What does it need to make it an active, participatory destination for its users?

Many of you post on Facebook. Why not here? Many of you don't trust Facebook (with justifiable reasons). Are we any more trustworthy? What if this were a closed site whereby only logged-in members could read content? Would that make a difference?

To be sure, I don't want to turn this into an OLIN-specific version of Facebook. Content here should be related to the OFS goals as defined in our by-laws:

1. encourage research in Olin family history;
2. foster formation and continuation of local and regional reunions and provide other opportunities to socialize with descendants of John Olin;
3. encourage connection with members of one's kin family;
4. maintain family histories, stories, traditions, records and artifacts; and,
5. develop activities, programs or resources as need is determined.

Look especially at item 4. Most of us will not write our auto-biographies, but we all have personal stories that are worthy of preservation for our children and grandchildren. One of my main objectives for this site was to provide a place to do so.

Most of you are not taking advantage of the opportunity. Please tell me why not. Add a comment below and tell us how we can make it happen.