Goal: To attract top authors and researchers to give a discussion on their topic of expertise in the discussion areas of our web site..

Estimated Time Commitment: This one is an ongoing project that can use as much time as you want. We can start slow with just one presentation/discussion every three months - (approximately the rate we are at now) and then increase it as you have time. By working with the person/people that are contacting the publishers you can probably quite easily get a good list of potential authors. To date I've had a very good reception by the authors of books - electronic meetings to discuss their books are becoming more popular and it is very convenient for these authors to do (they can do it from the comfort of their home frequently - and can log in whenever it is convenient).

I have typically asked that an author come in and support a discussion for a one week period (these are not like "chat sessions" but rather more like a bulletin board session where a person will ask a question one day, and then the author can dial into the Internet the next day and respond to questions). This format maximizes flexibilty for the authors - because they can drop into our web site at anytime of the day or night to respond to questions - and for our readers - many of whom might only visit the site once or twice a week.

To see an example of a discussion hosted by an author drop by the www.schizophrenia.com discussion areas and visit the "conference" titled "Seminar #1 - How to live with a mentally ill person" hosted by author Christine Adamec.  This was our first author to host such a seminar - we had another, more interactive one hosted by Clea Simon, author of "Mad House" (a sibling book), but we lost that discussion recently when our computer server crashed.

Ideally, we'd like to have an author or researcher about twice a month to visit the discussion areas for a couple of days like Christine Adamec or Clea Simon have done. .