[HANASHIR:13715] New tech for songleaders?

[Daniel Hoffer <dmh...>]

Dear fellow songleaders,

Hello! This is my first post to the list. I've been songleading for 
the last 10 years or so, mostly in the Boston area, and now in San 
Francisco. I'm a technology entrepreneur at heart and I used to do 
tech work for Jewish Family & Life Magazine, Jewish Web Week, 
Shamash, AJFCA, and other organizations.

I've been talking with Adrian about how more technology can help 
benefit the songleading community, and about some possible ways to 
expand the songleaders.org web site and even possibly the mailing 
list. We'd love to get your thoughts, if you have any, on what can be 
done.

Some ideas we were toying with -

- an online music library for people to upload audio clips of 
themselves playing songs, and also for scanned sheet music
- a Monster.com-like interface for synagogues and temples to search a 
database of songleaders, to hire people who match their criteria 
(same geographic area, applicable experience, etc. - songleaders can 
register themselves and include resumes or audio clips of themselves 
playing)
- online discussion forums where people can discuss subjects of 
interest - sorta like this email list, but on the web, so people can 
read through older messages and not get lots of email each day

The advantage of something like a music library is that everyone can 
learn quickly the songs they might need, whenever they want, and not 
need to depend on a fellow songleader happening to see their email 
request that day. But how do we control for quality songs? And are 
there copyright issues?

Wouuld *you* be interested in registering once so that temples in 
your area could find your name in a database and call you whenever 
they needed songleading, just like Monster.com?

What do you think of all this?

B'vracha,

/dan (and Adrian)
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