Nenad,I can feel your pain trying to build this web-site on a part-time basis. The amount of information you are tackling is enormous. I don't see how you can do all this without some financial investments. I'm not familiar with your back office operations or what you are doing technically to build this site - but automation can go a long way and tools especially for content management could make your life much simpler. Unfortunetly, as you already know, this costs money and resources to implement.Why not ask for member donations? $50 - $100 from each subscriber could go a long way. Personally I would not be opposed to an annual subscription fee. How about some advertising dollars? No matter how you cut it - this project is bound to grow and so will the costs. I would think most CROWN members find value in what you are providing and would be willing to support you.If it's okay with you, I will ask some of my web developers to look over the site and give me some feedback and suggestions. If you are faced with any specific issues, products evaluations/recommendations, software, hardware, etc. let me know I'll see what I can do to help.Feel free to give me a call.All the best,Zeljko FaciniNew York/New Jersey

Suggestions:NenadThe website is proceeding ahead swimmingly, I already use the archive stuff to pull out material for reference.I think you should switch over the timing of the articles on the home page and sections. ie the latest material first, rather than having to scroll down. Also maybe for the headlines should include an ariticle's title rather than a quote, it makes it easy to search for previous stuff.What about new, exclusive material for Croworld? I'm keen to get started on that. We can respond well to stuff like the History channel that way; an article linked prominently on the website detailing the programmes flaws and have at the end of it details of how to complain. You can get a whole extra crowd of people making complaints + also making the programmes flaws far more public - and thus embarrassing to those who sponsor it!Perhaps some kind soul could volunteer to deal with new material. Marko or John?BrianBrian GallagherLondon UKHi

Nenad, Croatian World Network is a great idea. Congratulations, and thanks for all your good work for Croatian Americans and Croatia. Do you think it is possible to have under the umbrella of your Network a place for all of us to find obituaries, weddings, Croatian Tamburica Orchestras, and kolo groups, etc. that are part of the past and present? I would love to be able to browse through something of that kind, but it is too time-consuming to look up these things in every state, county or city of this country. Thanks again. Diane Zdunich >>Dear Diane,Yes, this is all planed. First we have to find financing strategy and little by little we will accomplish all of the above. I wholeheartedly support such information and thank you for being part of it.Nenad

Hi Nenad,Let me see, a short bio..I am 27 years old, from Split - the most beautifulplace on Earth. I am working for a Croatian-American company here in Splitthat specializes in Internet and multimedia presentations, mostly focused onCroatian tourism. My both personal and professional interest and desire ispromotion of Croatia and its potential to the world in general. Quoting oneof the older songs from Split festival "Ca ce mi Copacabana, Acapulco iMadrid kad ja iman svoju valu kad ja iman svoju kalu tamo je moj cili svit"or loosely translated "who cares about Copacabana, Acapulco and Madrid whenI have my cove, when and my street which is my whole world"If anybody needs help, advice or any kind of information related to Croatia,and especially on Croatian tourism just drop me and e-mail. If I can't helpyou myself I will forward your inquiry to someone who can.I came across CROWN in a sig file of one of the e-mails I regularly receive.Can you please tell me more on how it actually works, like a regularnewsletter or some sort of a message board ...?Best regards,Vedran PrazenSretan ti put :)Moja struka je ekonomija a ne informatika, ali zbog prirode posla nesto sam pokupio znanja o HTMLlu i koristim PC. Ako imate potrebe za content-providerom tu imam dosta podataka na raspolaganju, pogotovo vezano uz turizam. Samo reci kako mogu pomoci. VedranSplit, Croatia

Dear Nenad!It is some time ago, that our friend professor Marusic advised me and many others to contact you and to enroll into your subscribers list, as we did.From these days your engagement is really great and on behalf of many of our friends, before all in the name of the "World Association of Croatian Physicians" I would like to express my gratefulness and my congratulations.Only through your mailing activities we gained over 20 new members from the United States! Thank you very much! Anyway I encourage everyone interested to join us in our activities. Please visit our Hopemage: www.wacp.org .

Dear Nenad, personally I am very willing to support you in your work as Net-Gatekeeper for the international croatian community of the second and third generation - you could not express it in a better way.Please let me know, in which way, also materially I can give you some support in your work. I also could imagine to put our WACP-Logo on your (our!) Homepage on a commercial base as a link to our page, if this is possible!In the name of the WACP I wish you and your baby, the croatianworld.net the great success it deserves, as well as God blessings and all the best for the next year!Yours sincerelyJosipDr. Dr. Josip S. Bill, M.D., D.D.S., Ph.D.World Association of Croatian Physicians2. secretaryGuggelesgraben 11, 97082 Wuerzburg, Germanye-mail: josip.bill@wacp.org www.wacp.org

Nenad -We are repeating the concert on Sunday, January 20 at 5:30 PM at CAMI Hall,165 West 57th Street.I also met a young Croatian jazz singer at our concert last night. When Iget more information, I will pass it on to you. She sings regularly onSundays in the city.All best,SvjetlanaNenad,How many people are on our CROWN network now? I would think that even a nominalsubscriber sum of $15.00 a year would help for an individual and considerablymore for those who want to link to their sites. Why don't you take a survey?Judy - St. Louis

Hi Nenad,My name is Mary Pavich. I read your note that you are having problems keeping up with the amount of info you have to send out. While e-newsletter is a great idea - the links you have set-up don't lead to the right stories.I am a content manager/webmaster for my Company's Web site. I'm the process of creating a monthly e-newsletter for the Company. I would be happy to help.Let me know if I can do anything to help.MARY PAVICH

Dear Mr. Bach:In your e-mail of today, you mention on-line promotion of the CROWNhomepage. Banner exchange may be one of the ways to do this, especially ifyour banner is on a oft-visited site. My brother, Eric Milcic, owns and runsa very busy website called www.biznizmen.com and would certainly gladly andproudly display the CROWN banner, in return for a placement of his banner onyours. If this would be of interest, please contact him at:eric@biznizmen.comI have taken the liberty of providing your name and e-mail address to him,and he will probably contact you to introduce himself and his company to youas well. I hope this helps, and I will keep my eyes and ears open to assistin any other way I can.Kindest regards,Allen MilcicCanada

Dear Nenad:Congratulations on a successful year working as the"unofficial" pr agent for Croatia. Keep up the greatwork!From this end over here, the Croats still really donot realize how much people like yourself in thediaspora are doing for them. Our people are strange,but they will come around eventually.If there is anything that I can do to help expand yoursphere of influence and contacts, please let me know. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.Sincerely,Nicholas Cetinic-PetrisDubrovnikDear Nenad:Thanks for your response: That will be okay if you add it on later. Iunderstand well the technical problems that can occur when putting up a website. Best of luck. I am now an Australian citizen but was born and raisedin Canada (of English/Scottish ancestry), and made Australia my home when Imet my husband there who is from Policnik, near Zadar. We have built ahouse there. Croatia is so fantastic. Regards, Jean W. Lunt-MarinovicAustralia

Dear fellow CroatsThis daunting and laudable challange should not be ruined by petty clannish squabbles. Comments should be kept brief and incisive. The net must function as a pedagogical + educational tool in sounding out broader foreign perspectives of the Croatian plight and agenda.1. Focus on political issues within wider geopolitical and geohistorical framework - using always simple readable yet perfect English. We do not need to convince the convinced!2. The net must hook up and cater to the ignorant ones in the USA; the media, particularly, it must tackle the USA media coverage of Croatia's recent history, the semi-kangaroo Hague proceedings, etc.3. It must gently start demolishing piled up myths and EastCoast hearsays about the Croatian identity.4. Based on evidence of at least five CROWN forum people, it must expose, in a soft spoken manner, croniism, corruption and crime of the past-present-would-be Croat elites -regardless of their left-right- facho-commie pedigree.5. It must give due credit to thousands of anonymous Croat houswifes and foreign volunteers from Vancouver to Perth from Malmoe to Durban who, from 1990-1995 collected hardware, money, baked cakes and gave lots of pesos, DMs and truckloads of greenbacks in order to enable Croatia's present elites to be something. Remember the US proverb! "You don't get something for nothing..!"6. Based on evidence its must expose well paid incompetent "Croat" officials and diplomats - ignoring though vengence and their communist or anti-communist past. If however, the official is incompetent by Western standards, and happens to be a former Yugo or KOS-Udba snitch + indirectly owing his present career to the killings of thousands of Croats, creating neverending exodus waves.. and to your/our charity, ask for "linkage": one crate of your former goods = firing of 1 incompetent Croat official.This may help us exit our past-present traumas.yoursDr Tom.SunicZagreb

Dear Nenad,While to my knowledge I have no Croatian ancestry, I am still very much interested in the people, the culture, the land. On October 1 of last year, a friend and I were set to travel to Venice where we would then board a yacht and cruise along the Dalmatian Coast for a week. We were so excited to be going to Dubrovnik, Split, Pula, Korcula, etc. Of course then September 11 happened and we were advised not to go at that particular time. We were fortunate to get a credit on our trip, but unfortunate in that the tour group would not be doing another trip to Croatia this year. Thus, we had to settle for France. We're excited to be going there in May, but we both still would love to visit Croatia in the future and see that beautiful Adriatic Sea in person! In the past year I have learned so much more about Croatia than I ever dreamed of. I find it such an interesting place and would love to visit one day. I think I can speak for my friend when I say that we would definitely be interested in a trip to that lovely country. Thank you for this wonderful group and excellent work on the website:)Sincerely,Sharon S.

Dragi Nenad,Srdacne cestitke na novim web-stranicama.Nadam se da cemo moci poceti i sprojektom Hrvatske umjetnicke galerije na internetu.U svakom slucaju dragomi je da posao lijepo napreduje.Sto se mene tice ja mislim da bi svakakotrebalo nastojati da sa sa direktnom vezom povezu svi veci svjetski centrisa Hrvatskom.Vjerujem da bi u tome imala racuna i Croatia Airlines, ,jer posvemu sudeci JAT ce nastojati obnoviti direktne lijetove kao nekada iz NewYorka i Toronta prema Zagrebu i Beogradu.Neznam zasto Croatia Airlinesnemoze naci racunicu da uspostavi tu direktnu vezu.Siguran sam da bi je nasiHrvati nagradili tako da bi letjeli svojom kompanijom.Srdacan pozdrav Vlado Polgarhej Nenad! Congratulations! Fr. Slaven

Bog Nenad,i mi smo ulozili u radio vise od 10 000 sati do sada, ne racunajuci ulozenennovce,..:-((Nitko ne zeli pomoci. Takvi su, na zalost Hrvati. Ako covjek nesto radi iz ljubavi, ili zbog moralne obveze, vecina puka to ionako ne moze povjerovati, vec uvijek traze nekoga "tko stoji iza toga",.. tko to financira i diktira! Ne znam kako je u Americi ali ovdje u CH i u HR je stvarno tako. Nama se ne uvlaci nikome zbog nekih sitnih novaca, niti se zelimo nikome "prodati" i izgubiti za medije tako neophodnu neovisnost, pa onda niti ne primamo nista.Bilo je s vremena na vrijeme nekih malih donacija i njih smo spomenuli i zahvalili se na nasim WEB stranicama.. i to je to.A kad se nesto hrvatsko ugasi onda svi pocnu dizati buku u smislu: "Pa zasto se bas hrvatsko npr. glasilo moralo ugasiti? Pa sto su nam to smjestili,..pa tko je kriv za to,.. itd.!Vrlo rado bi vas pomogli ali vjeruj nam, nemamo s cim!Pozvat cemo nase slusatelje na akciju ali ne ocekuj nista,.. :-((to je sve sto mozemo za vas ucinitiVelikik Pozdrav i puno uspjeha u akciji prikupljanja finacijskih sredstavaza tako svijetlu idejuHKRzoran knezevicSwitzerlandwww.hkr.ch

Nenad,Count me in for any input, assistance, calls, leg work, etc. that is needed. My thoughts are consistant with yours. The time IS now. I am not one to put things on the back burner regarding the betterment of Croatia, and I am here to help as needed; contacts, letters, research, proof reading, etc.Sretan Bozic,LindaCaliforniaNenad,I've just gone to the site. Bravo! For the first time in a long time I'm (cautiously) excited about a Croatian "activist" site. Count me in!If you could get me a 468 x 60 GIF for Crown I will donate a banner space on CroLinks and CroMusic for the cause.I look forward to working with you on this endeavour.Ante Milardovic

CONGRATS!...on all your efforts and on a beautiful site! The ONLY way to do it...bypassing all the bickerings and taking reins into one's own hands. BLAGOSLOVLJEN BOZIC tebi i tvojima~ Asta

Nenad:As always, it was great seeing you in LA (thanks again for lunch). I hope you and your family had a wonderful Christmas and best wishes for 2002.Congratulations on the launch of your site. It is a great accomplishment and will hopefully serve as a big step toward developing a company that promotes and connects Croatians with each other and to the world.As I mentioned at our lunch, I developed a rough first draft of a Croatian media, marketing and entertainment company that uses its website as the hub for all activities. Rather than sending the entire text, I have only attached the overview page with this e-mail. I would enjoy reading your business plan and look forward to hearing your thoughts on my overview and any assistance that I might be able to offer you. Sretna Nova Godina!Jack Baric

Dear Nenad,To make it short we need financial help.I propose an annual subscription $100 to CROWN and I am of coursewilling to subscribe.Let's see how many others have their $$$ where their mouth is.If you see better schemes - fine - let me know.All the best,Davor PavunaSwitzerlandOp-ed

Your letters come from minimum of four continents every day. Yes, I will accept subscription. And nobody will be taken off the list either.nb Address:Nenad Bach, CROWN Croatia.org P.O.Box 145, Croton on Hudson New York 10520, USA

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