The following was posted on the trdev (training and development group), announcing the closing of the discussion group.

We’ll be posting further analysis, shortly.

ANNOUNCEMENT: The trdev list will close on January 27. The list’s archives have been deleted and the membership database will be deleted at that time. All and any messages members have received as a result of their membership of trdev remain copyrighted to the original author or authors of those messages.

We appreciate the many participants of this mailing list who have stayed with us over the years, and have offered generous contributions, advice, knowledge, and humor.

This decision is final, and the owners will not enter into any correspondence about it. This decision came over several months and after several alternatives were explored.

Please use the next two days to say your goodbyes and refrain from blaming and second guessing our decision. It is not a democratic decision, but then (as we have pointed out several times in the past) neither is or was trdev ever a democracy.

The reasons for the unanimous decision by the three current owners (Bev Ferrell, Kobus Kruger and Rich Pearlstein) are many and varied. They relate to the continued usefulness of the list and changing circumstances among the owners and coordinators.

Since the Yahoo!Groups’ incarnation of trdev was started by Doug Max in October 2000, after the original TRDEV-L closed down, we have built a membership of about 4,450, who have posted more than 33,700 messages to the list. An analysis of the recent participation shows a declining message and topic stream that begs the question of the continuing usefulness of the list.

The usefulness of the list must further be seen against the background of the growth of networking media, as much as it is to be seen in the light of the economic pressure the economy is under. When the list started, blogs were in its infancy. Social networking on the net then consisted of sending a friend an email. Mobile technologies had yet to reach the 3G stage. Over time these connection technologies matured and steadily chipped away at our subscriber base.

Of our current roughly 4K subscribers, the participation rate – messages per subscriber per year – has also declined, again bringing the question of usefulness to the fore. Link this to the increasingly more common complaint of our unsubscribing members, some of them long time participants, that discussions on trdev are dominated by regular posters. This created
the perception of trdev as a club of insiders, indicative of an insider culture acting as an immune system.

Apart of the foregoing we, the owners of the trdev list, need to move on. Although the theories and practices of Training and Development and Performance Improvement will always remain part of the lenses with which we view and understand the world of work, our careers and interests have shifted and our work-time demands now are vastly different from a few years ago.

During the last few years we have made several and repeated appeals for assistance. Those coordinators who did join us brought an impressive range of skills and insights to the often thankless task of coordinating postings to the list. Quite a few of them, such as Paughnee Moore, Don Denier, Godfrey Parkin, Holly Gaspar and Joy Jacob stuck around for a considerable time, but eventually life has a way of moving on, and most opted to quit as active coordinators. Understandably, with their insight into the list’s demands on owners, none of them were willing to take over the ownership of trdev.  Apart from these few individuals, the other coordinators also rendered valuable assistance, but moved on when they needed to. The list include the likes of Dave Ferguson, Gautam Ghosh, Ajit Limaye, Mike Willis, James Morrissey, Mike Greer, Mike Morrell, B Prem Rao, Karishma Pais, Lucy Ford, Beth Tang, Kim Melody, Sharlyn Lauby, and Rick Presley. We remain grateful
to everyone who served as coordinator.

Over the years we have had heaps of praise for the way that trdev was run. Although the three owners had an equal share of whatever praise we received, the burden of much of the day-to-day operations of the list was mostly picked up by Bev. Her care and concern for the unwavering stewardship of the list and ethical practices of trdev will go down as an exemplar in the annals of list management. She has given far more time and attention to managing the list than anyone could have expected. From both Rich and Kobus: “Thanks, Bev!”

We also had our share – fair or not, we got it – of negativity and ad hominem attacks and criticism. It is par for the course, and we have learned to take the sour with the sweet. Some attacked our stricter positions on things such as commercial postings and copyright. We believe that our policies are what kept trdev’s ethical profile high and the list free from partisan interests.

No doubt you may wonder why we have not opted to simply hand over the list to a new group of owners and coordinators. We have considered this very carefully. Whether by default or design, the trdev coordinators have evolved a unique way of steering and shaping the list. Should a new set of owners take over, no doubt this sensitive ecology will be disturbed. The chances that such a change may prove to be toxic is very high. We have more than just considered it, and have explored a particularly promising avenue with a respected academic institution. Unfortunately to date this avenue was unfruitful. Because of personal circumstances among the owners, we cannot delay the closure any longer.

What then is next for the loyal trdev subscribers? To that question we can only say that “trdev is as trdev shall emerge”. The internet is big and still largely free, and although we have immense respect for it, we hold no property right (intellectual or otherwise) over the trdev franchise. (If anybody holds such a right, it should be Penn State and Dr David Passmore, who operated the original TRDEV-L for years.)

Who knows what will grow from the seeds of the soon-to-be defunct trdev? As current owners our hope is that whatever emerges, it will be steeped in the collegial ethos and spirit of what we have tried to provide the training and development community over the last eight years.

Respectfully,
Bev Ferrell
Kobus Kruger
Richard Pearlstein

PS. If you have uploaded files in files section that you wish to continue to share for the next two days, please let us know and we will post a direct link to your website for the files.

We will post links to other groups for the next few days if we can find some, but please unsubscribe your addresses if you do not wish to receive those links.