Sempervivum Society Journal

Hi All,

I was a member of the British Sempervivum society for years , but eventually it died a death because of a lack of new articles . The colour illustrations were actually photographs which were glued in position in the centre of the written article .
I then joined an American society which produced an A4 sized broadsheet for about 2 years and died for the same reason .
I personally would be very wary about trying to recreate a society , with a magazine , for the very same reason and also because of the commitment it places on a few dedicated organisers .
Having had those earlier experiences I would like to say that I view this online forum as my Society , with a vast amount of information to hand at any given time . I realise that Renata already spends much time expanding the photographic reference list and this is going to become an even better asset in the future .
So there we are ...I am proud of what has been achieved by the International Sempervivum Forum and feel we should spend our time maintaining and improving this . We should publicise our presence at every opportunity and perhaps ask one or two stars like Erwin Geiger, Volkmar Schara or Howard Wills to write a guest article for us .
Online it is so easy to chip in with an opinion as I have done tonight, but would I have put pen to paper , probably not .
On the subject of locating Peter Mitchell , I think the person most likely to know of his whereabouts is Howard Wills of Fernwood Nursery England , as the two collaborated closely when Peter held the national reference collection .
Best Wishes

John

Thank you so much John. Lots of very helpful information in your post. I really appreciate it.
I also agree about the online sites being our link to information on Sempervivum.

I agree that it is likely that only a few people will actively write something for a new society, I wrote something in this direction already before.

I still think that a database is an excellent idea, even if in the end not so many people participate. At least from those people it will be clear which varieties they have.

About asking people to contribute articles to this forum: Erwin Geiger already has his own newsletter, why not simply make links to this?

Of course this forum is an excellent place for collecting information, but to me internet is NOT reliable for long term storage of information. One server-problem and all is gone. One person who doesn't have the energy to put it back online and it is gone forever. I know that we are all having best intentions, but I remember a very informative page about fish. The owner of this page sadly died some time ago. Because no-one payed for maintainance of the site, the server cicked it off. I could save a few pages through Google's back ups, but most of what was there is unfindable, which includes collecting history of some strains of fish which are still bred by specialists.

What i really miss is a good book about Sempervivum, in the first place about all the wild species as they are known/recognised nowadays. About cultivars I miss an overview with basic data (breeder, year of registration, description) and photographs taken throughout the year. All printed on real paper, because the quality of pictures will be better and especially, there will be more copies around which increases the chance that this information remains available in the future.

And to be honest, to check many details and soak up many pictures I much rather sit in a comfortable chair with a book than behind a computer screen.

All of the Sempervivum Journals can be found here:

http://stalikez.info/fsm/semp/site/bibli_gb.php