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JLP’s Guide to Using the Web Plan a High School Reunion
By JLP | July 7, 2008
This year marks my high school classes’ 20th reunion. And, although I’m not organizing it, I did offer to help with the web effort. Here’s what I did:
The first thing I did was set up a website called 88Hornets.com with the tagline “The Official Website of the Valley Center High School Class of 1988.” My theory was that my classmates would figure out that this year marked our 20th high school reunion and would try to find out information by doing a Google search.
The next thing I did was become a Gold member on Classmates.com. Yeah, it cost me $39 per year but it gave me access to quite a few email addresses of people to contact. I sent a message to every person from the class of 88 and told them about the reunion and included a link to 88Hornets.com and also told them to please spread the word. I would say that about half of them responded. I also utilized my Outlook contacts as I had stayed in touch with a few of my classmates over the years.
I will say that I absolutely HATE Classmates.com. The website is horrible to use and they charge too freakin’ much for what you get. I’m hoping this is the only year I have to use their website.
At the prodding of one of my friends, I set up a profile on Facebook and started making friends with fellow classmates. So far most of my facebook friends already knew of the reunion but I do think at least one person found us through facebook.
Finally, I utilized Switchboard.com to look up phone numbers. This is a hit-and-miss way to find people but sometimes it works. I found quite a few people going this route. The hardest part is finding the girls since most of them have changed names over the years. It makes it very difficult to track them down. I’m hoping that word-of-mouth will find them all. It’s also frustrating when the last name is common because it usually leads to several pages of names to go through.
I hope all my efforts pay off. It’s been fun getting in touch with people that I haven’t talked to in years. It’s my goal to keep 88Hornets.com up and running for years to come so that my class always has a place to go to find out important class-related information. Then, maybe our 25th reunion won’t be so hard to organize.
We’ll see…
Topics: Miscellaneous | 9 Comments »
July 7th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Are you sure that shouldn’t be 78hornets.com?
July 7th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Nope, that would be for older bloggers like yourself! LOL!
Please, don’t make me any older than I already am!
July 7th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Oh I was born in 88!
July 7th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
EN,
Thanks. Thanks a lot!
July 7th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
I’ve never actually been to Classmates.com but I keep seeing ads for it so I was curious and appreciated your quick review. Now I know not to waste my time! Enjoy planning the reunion
P.S. EN’s making me feel old too!
July 8th, 2008 at 7:54 am
I hate classmates.com too. With facebook and myspace where do they get off thinking they can get away with charging so much? I am surprised they are still in business.
July 8th, 2008 at 8:23 am
Try using http://www.usa-people-search.com/People-Name-Search.aspx for the ladies from your class. I’ve searched by previous names and most of the time you get their married name as well.
July 9th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
My 10-year reunion is in 2 weeks. The biggest challenge for me was finding my class based on 10 year old contact information and getting people to get their money and RSVPs in early. I found close to 150 people on Myspace.com and Facebook. For the other 250 I used their old addresses we got from the high school and cross-referenced them with Intelius’people search service. For under 20 bucks I bought a 24-Hour People Search Pass and was able to find most of the people left on my list. Super helpful. Another tip would be to set up a paypal account, it’s too late now but I was amazed at the number of people that were irritated that they had to write out a check. Plus, I think it would have sped up the RSVPs considerably.
July 10th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Check out this family website: http://www.ReunionPeopleSearch.com