New hosts, managers & assignments

[Fat Guy]

What started as a group of seven like-minded food lovers in August 2001 has grown into a global organization with more than 13,000 members and a volunteer staff of dozens. Today we are pleased to announce the first group of new volunteer staff since we reorganized as the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters.

Susan Fahning (aka “snowangel”) will join the team as a Cooking forum host, and will also be a RecipeGullet administrator. Susan Burgess (aka “Susan in FL”) will be hosting the newly created Florida forum, as well as joining the Beer forum team. Arne Salvesen (aka “Daddy-A”) will be taking on the Vancouver, British Columbia, and Western Canada forum. Marsha Lynch (aka “Zilla369”) will join the Food Media & News hosting team. Chris Amirault (aka “Chrisamirault”) will be joining the team hosting the General Food Topics forum. Yetty Sharief (aka “spaghetttti”) will be handling the Elsewhere in Asia/Pacific forum. Charles Sweeney (aka “busboy”) will be joining the DC & DelMarVa team. And finally we welcome Ted Niceley (aka “tan319”) to the Pastry & Baking forum hosting team.

This new group, which brings the size of the eGullet Society volunteer staff to 54 (not including the many non-staff volunteers who help with the media digests and other tasks), is a collection of extraordinary individuals from around the world. They've chosen to dedicate their time to this organization and community not for money, power or even fun (they all know how thankless the administrative work can be around here), but because they believe in what the eGullet Society stands for: the advancement of culinary knowledge.

In addition, we've deployed several of our current staff in new positions.

Current hosts Pedro Espinosa (aka “Pedro”), Lucy Vanel (aka “bleudauvergne”), Ron Kaplan (aka “Ronnie_Suburban”), Alberto Chinali (aka “albiston”), Dave Solomon (aka “melkor”) and Stanley Santos (aka “SobaAddict70”) are becoming Society managers.

And several of our hosts are taking on additional forums.

Alberto Chinali (aka “albiston”) is adding Elsewhere in Europe to his portfolio. Mary Baker (aka “Rebel Rose”) will be joining the California team. Jason Perlow will be working on Adventures in Eating. Stanley Santos (aka “SobaAddict70”) will be helping with General Food Topics. And Samuel Kinsey (aka “slkinsey”) will be joining the Cocktails and Fine Spirits hosting team.

You can read the short biographies of all our volunteer staff on our updated Meet the Team page. We hope you'll join us in congratulating, welcoming and helping these new volunteers in the execution of their duties.

The eGullet Society is an all-volunteer organization with no paid staff. Although we hope to be able to add some paid administrative staff when our budget allows, the foundation of the organization will remain all-volunteer. As our membership and reach expand, we reach the limits of our human resources and find that we must expand the team or stagnate. Even with this incredible group joining the team, there is much we still can't do because we just don't have the people (or the money, but that's another issue).

You can help. There are many ways to volunteer, not just as a host or manager (those duties are quite time consuming, and not well suited to most people's schedules and preferences). Reach out to any host or manager and volunteer to do one of the media digests, organize an educational event in your area, submit a weekly greenmarket report or let us know if you're a graphic artist, computer programmer, educator, librarian, accountant or publicist willing to contribute some of your professional services. There is much to be done.

Finally, a big thank-you to our eG People team for making all this happen. At this point the eGullet Society is essentially a medium-sized corporation (a not-for-profit one, but a corporation nonetheless) and we have our own equivalent of a personnel or human resources department, headed by the tireless Marlene Newell (aka “Marlene”). Every one of our new team members has been through a rigorous process of interviewing and induction, and receives ongoing training. Those who toil behind the scenes, administratively, get the least thanks and acknowledgment of anybody in the organization, so thank you very much to them for all their hard work in getting us to this point.