Ready for some possibly unexpected news?  Frauenfeld is going away.  

Wow.  It's not out of the blue.  Here is what has been going on:

There has been a lot of discussion over the latter part of last year and up until now, as to what might happen to this site after I retire.  I managed to get some friends involved in the day to day work and writing and support.  In the long run however, things weren't looking too promising.

Take Jake and Neha and Ted as the most obvious examples.  They have their busy lives as they had before contributing here.  This site doesn't make them money, or add to their professional lives.  They do it as a favor to me.  

Along with that obvious long term issue, more recently there has been talk about a bigger picture approach.  To change the paradigm of myopia treatment, by adding prevention and rehab as another "new and optional" tool to the arsenal of the optometrist.  To that end, my site is  just too small.  After all it was just the domain for my own practice and myopia rehab tools. 

I don't think that an idea that might reach thousands of practitioners will grow well in a pot as small as this one.  I don't expect practitioners to feel ok about promoting concepts that are branded as mine, and refer to a site with my name.  

As all of this conversation has been going on, a group of guys have started working on just such a larger alternative, separate from all of this here.  We were introduced a few months ago, and really like their ideas and approach.

They are going social, going after areas where sight is a requisite, and formulating strategies that optometrists can integrate into their practice, are all very promising tactics.  And they have the ear of other health experts, which will help them get more exposure.  

And that's when we decided that Frauenfeld could serve one more purpose.

We all came to agree that I happen to have a lot of existing content and contributors, which would be a good fit to their approach.  Instead of letting Frauenfeld just become stagnant over time, the content and ideas will be donated to live on as part of their sites.  It will work out great for all concerned, since my writing will reach more people in the future - and for our new friends it is ideal since they will be able to start with a lot of existing reading material.

That is just as far as the blog is concerned.  As the courses go, I'm taking a different route to ensure they get the most use.  Neha introduced me to a company in her country which catalogs and sells rehabilitation tools and systems.  They will license the intellectual property for the courses, and most likely you'll see them in some form back on the new site.  The finer details there I am not entirely certain of, but I'm sure it will all work out well.

Tangibly, what this means for you:

If you are a current course subscriber, you will get an e-mail with more details.  You will have the choice to opt in to receiving course materials from the new provider.  No credit card details are ever shared of course, and there won't be any other changes whatsoever to your subscription.  And of course all of your e-mails remain private, the only shared content will be what can be found in the open forum.

That aside, in the beginning it will just be a different domain name, but everything will continue to work as it has been.  The migration of the courses isn't expected for a few months yet, and everything is set up to happen in phases.  First it will just be as it's ever been, and over time you'll see improvements to course content, and more support options.  

So, not to worry!  Everything will be as it has been, for you, just a different Website but with all of your login and progress and forum posts intact, as a start.

If you are a reader of the blog, things should continue as normal, though no longer on my site (oh that makes me a bit sad!).  Thought everybody is excited to see something larger than just writing for old Alex' site, so it is for the best.  

There hasn't been much in the way of comments or social media participation here, so I don't expect this to affect many people.  If we had more of a community I'd be concerned, but as I see it the blog is just a "read and run" at this point anyway.

If you enjoy the forum, you should be excited.  I limited the forum to support only.  In the future you should be able to interact with more people other than just course participants.  There is also talk of having more practitioners, optometrists and ophthalmologists partaking in community dialog.  

This is all going to take some time I assume, but it's a better outlook than just this small site can provide.

If you are in one on one with me, then for you nothing changes.  There is still me, and I'm continuing existing one on one.  I won't be accepting new clients and while I am booked till next year, after that I will be phasing out this activity - again though, existing clients are not affected, I will continue to be around for you.

All this has been in planning and stages of transition for a little while.  You should see the domain change soon, followed by a whole number of updates to things outside of the blog.

Exciting times.  I'll be mostly sitting back and watching, and of course keeping in touch with those of you who have been part of this amazing online experiment in myopia rehab.

Enjoy all the good new things coming!

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