The Good Time Net

Why We're Doing It

The team working on the Good Time Net hails from several walks of life, and their motivation to put in the hours varies. Here are some of the reasons we feel Orange County needs the Good Time Net, with the last reason perhaps the most important, and why we get out of bed every morning to work on it:

• The most common cause of one's perception of limited recreational opportunities in Orange County is a lack of useful information about the many recreational opportunities that do exist.

• Public facilities and non-profit organizations provide wholesome, cost-effective recreational alternatives to TV, movies, restaurants, and amusement parks which have captured the public attention primarily through the advertising that only for-profit entertainment can afford.

• With the growth of telecommuting and the virtual community, people will grow more isolated as they conduct more of their lives without the need to come face-to-face with other humans. As one of the principal catalysts in this social change, the internet should also be used as a tool to facilitate face-to-face interaction through community recreational activities.

• Recreation, particularly inexpensive outdoor recreation, is a deterrent to crime, particularly inner-city youth crime - if only they knew where to go.

• Membership clubs, city recreation departments, and other promoters of recreational events and destinations do not have much money to advertise, and a printed catalog of their events and destinations would be obsolete days before it was printed. The internet presents a new media without the expense of printing on dead trees nor the cost of distribution. This allows a new form of low-budget, high-value communication.

• If we can build a business out of the Good Time Net, we will have jobs that are fun, and we will have contributed a significant, ongoing resource to our community.

• Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. -- Chief Seattle