Four More Years!
July 25, 2005
Last year at this time, we sat here and threatened the end of DCGreeks.com.
Our actual four year anniversary coincidentally coincided with a nice dinner and
wine-tasting at Mourayo on Saturday night, surrounded by other young Greek
adults who were simply there like us with their respective parea enjoying the
evening. Now on the first Monday of the start of our fifth year, we are pleased
to report that DCGreeks.com will continue, hopefully not just for one year,
rather for at least four more years. We’re having fun again with the site, are
encouraged by some of its positive effects, and have plans to continue to expand
the content we bring to the community here in DC and beyond.
We recently were delighted to learn that three couples in the DC area have
gotten or are getting married this year and that they met through our member
directory. This is encouraging news seeing as we tried hard in the beginning to
de-emphasize the “dating site” aspects of DCGreeks.com particularly after
wrapping up our bachelor/bachelorette auction in 2002. Not many people associate
our site with dating these days but we’ve come to realize that the site has
grown enough over four years that there’s room for it to be more of a dating
site. One of the reasons we originally started this site in the first place was
for local people to meet considering there are many international dating sites
devoted to dating Greeks, that while nice to look at, aren’t conducive to
making lasting relationships unless you work for the airlines and get free trips
across the U.S. and Canada. It astonishes us that we recognize people from the
DC area who will post pictures and pay to be subscribers on these other sites
but don’t take advantage of the free resource and hundreds of people they
could be meeting on DCGreeks.com. Maybe it’s that our member directory doesn’t
look like a typical dating sites member directory. We are planning some changes
in the coming months to allow those who are looking for more than just friends
to find others in the area and beyond. (Note: This doesn’t mean that our
non-single audience doesn’t have a place on our member directory or on our
site. As we’ll mention below, we’re glad that we have such a diverse Greek
young adult audience in different stages of their lives visiting this site.)
After four years, its time that we embrace the fact that part of this site is
focused on dating (and hopefully eventually marriage) and to stop apologizing
for it.
Our second trip to Clearwater in two years and the continued national draw of
YAL DC Weekend has made us relax our almost exclusive focus on the DC area. An
important part of the Greek-American experience that separates us from
non-ethnic Americans is our destination conferences that allow us to meet other
Greek Americans and compare how Greek life is in different parts of the country.
We are looking forward to bringing coverage from the 2nd Annual Opa Las
Vegas & Greek Festival Trip in late September and from The Greek Cruise to
Nassau and Cococay in January. We plan to actually make it to the AHEPA National
Convention next year and hope there is a YAL National Convention as well. When
Greeks from DC travel to other Greek events it only helps raise awareness for DC
as a destination for Greeks from across the country to come visit and even
relocate.
Also in the last year we’ve come to realize that if DCGreeks.com is to
continue to remain fresh that we’re going to need some help and some different
perspectives. We’re happy that not only are we getting newer members and
visitors who may have been too young to appreciate DCGreeks.com when it first
started, but that our original members continue to visit us even through changes
in their lives like marriage and in some cases children. It would be great if we
could provide more elements for this portion of our community, and we’ll be
looking for more ways to keep this audience interested in this site as well. (DCGreeks.com
will naturally grow up as we continue to grow up but it will still cater to the
energy brought by the younger adults in our community.) Feel free to contact us
if there is anything else you’d like to see represented on this site or if you
have anything to contribute.
Again, as we embark on our fifth year we would like to thank our visitors,
those in the DC area and nationally that organize events, and those in the Greek
community who support these events. Our site would be nothing without a living,
breathing, Greek community in DC and elsewhere. We look to serve this community
better in the next year and hope that we are able to follow through on some of
the promises we’ve set forth in this article.
Read
past feature articles