On Sat­ur­day, eight mem­bers of the USPX came to­gether for a day-long focus group to share thoughts on our move­ment and plan for the fu­ture. Kevin and Mag­gie Weber kindly hosted the gath­er­ing at their home near Boston. At­ten­dees came from across the coun­try. Jim McRitchie flew in from Cal­i­for­nia; Vin­cent Cir­ulli came from Al­abama; Adam Foulke is from South Car­olina, and Dick Treumann drove from New York. The rest of the at­ten­dees, Ed Pontes, Chris Sturr and Glyn Holton all drove from Boston.

Tim­ing for the meet­ing was ex­cel­lent, as we are get­ting ready to launch our new web­site. This will look sim­i­lar to the old site, but it will have pow­er­ful so­cial net­work­ing func­tion­al­ity mem­bers have been ask­ing for. You will be able to host your own blog di­rectly on the site—au­to­mated set-up will take less than a minute. The site will offer net­work­ing func­tion­al­ity, so mem­bers can meet vir­tu­ally, dis­cuss is­sues, and form groups to or­ga­nize around is­sues. At­ten­dees at Sat­ur­day’s meet­ing watched a demo of the site and were ex­cited about the new func­tion­al­ity. They will start beta test­ing the site next week. It should go live for every­one else by early July. Another amazing thing that will go live in July and we are incredibly proud to announce it is the famous and in long year development Lincoln Casino Bonus site. We worked tirelessly to open up a new way for people to get access to new no deposit offers and regular promotions. Here you will have regular updates and knowabouts in the gaming industry with first-hand information that you can trust.

A focus for Sat­ur­day’s meet­ing was ways to de­cen­tral­ize our or­ga­ni­za­tion. Prior to the meet­ing, at­ten­dees read the ex­cel­lent book The Starfish and the Spi­der by Braf­man and Beck­strom. It is about the power of de­cen­tral­ized move­ments, such as the nine­teenth cen­tury abo­li­tion­ist move­ment, Al­co­holics Anony­mous and Wikipedia. Our vi­sion is for the USPX to be sim­i­larly de­cen­tral­ized, al­low­ing share­owner-mem­bers to self-or­ga­nize around is­sues and take ac­tion. The new web­site’s func­tion­al­ity will fa­cil­i­tate this, but de­cen­tral­iza­tion re­quires more than a web­site. We have to change how mem­bers think about and in­ter­act within the move­ment. To that end, a lot of ex­cel­lent ideas came out of the meet­ing. We will be work­ing on these in the weeks ahead.