Ken
Hello.

Mary
Hi, Ken. This is Mary Klaus. Why dont you tell me about how you got involved with MyAlumni website today?

Ken
Well, its a little bit of an involved story, but it really starts several years ago, at least the germ of the idea did. Unfortunately, one of our high school classmates, a fellow that we all liked and lived right here in our town of  Haddonfield contracted a brain tumor and died of cancer in hospice after about a year. A lot of us didnt know about it until some of us read about it in the local newspaper; this is, his obituary. So I said to some of my friends that most of the women that we know tend to be really connected to the organizations they belong to, and we men tend to be more aloof and separate and distinct. So I said, We ought to find a way or a forum to sort of at least be connected with the male classmates or former classmates that we knew from years ago.

 

We hit upon this idea of having a monthly breakfast, and we do it at a local diner in Cherry Hill called Ponsios*. Its either the first or second Wednesday of every month. Its really worked out well. We get anywhere from 12 to 20 attendees at any one particular meeting. I guess given our ages, we all graduated from high school more than 50 years ago. We tend to look backwards rather than forward in terms of reliving memories and reminisces. But its really been great and a lot of people like it, a lot of laughs, and we have a lot of fun. So after a couple years of this, were actually in our fourth year now, I said, We ought to be able to come up with some kind of a website just for our class, and we thought maybe some younger friend or relative might be able to help us; but we couldnt really find one. I got introduced to our web master, Monday Osagie, by our older son, Bill, and he constructed a very nice website for Merchantville High School. Along the way, we said, Well, if we like this kind of website for our high school class, maybe others would too.� So Monday suggested perhaps we would construct whats known as a search engine where we can do far more things than just offer a website. So over time, this is what has happened, and weve decided more recently to be different than classmates.com and others like reunion.com is that we would feature alumni interviews and alumni success stories similar to the one that youre conducting with me right now.

Mary
Thats a great story, Ken.

Ken
Yeah and I just want to conclude, Mary, by saying we have this new pod cast technology, which permits us not only to have these audio interviews but also video, and we look forward to our viewers being able to visit and see, as well as listen to them. Thank you very much.

Mary
Thank you.