Mediate.com Celebrates Ten Years of Development

Mediate.com is the brainchild of John Helie and Jim Melamed and began formal operations on January 1, 1996. Carol Knapp, Chief Technical Officer, and Byron Knapp, Server Administrator, joined the team in 1997. John Ford joined as Managing Editor in 1998 and Robert Benjamin has since joined as Features Editor. The Mediate team is completed by Josh Remis, Web Shop Director; Angie Letney, Customer Service & Billing; and Alex Dennison, Video Editor. See the Mediate.com Staff Page. Mediate.com is also guided by a capable Board and Advisory Board .

Building Bridges and Sharing Information

Mediate.com currently offers over 1,800 Articles (without cost) to professionals and to the general public. Our over 6,500 average daily visitors navigate to desired information by Section, Topic and Text Searches (located at the top of every page of Mediate.com).

Mediate.com is having meaningful success in “spreading the word” about mediation and effective dispute resolution. A search of Google shows Mediate.com to be #1 among over 25,000,000 web pages that reference “mediation”!

Mediate.com web site statistics show a rate of approximately 2.5 million annual visitor sessions with an average visitor spending over 13 minutes at the Mediate site.

Providing Leading Edge Web Site Technology and Service

Mediate.com has assisted over 500 mediators and dispute resolution organizations to develop unlimited-page, self-managed Dynamic Web Sites to effectively share complete information with the world. About half of these sites are located on the Mediate.com domain, with the other half located at individual client domains (Mediate.com offers virtual hosting services). Mediate.com specializes in dynamic web sites that are under the client's direct control. Mediate.com trains clients to use the Dynamic Web Site System and provides ongoing technical support. See Dynamic Web Site Package.

Mediate also offers web site "add-ons," such as an ecommerce package for securely taking credit card payments and an organizational directory and individual member web page system. Over 100 free designs are available and custom design can be added at any time.

Unique Marketing Opportunities

Mediate.com's Locate A Mediator (LAM) Directory is now in its 10th year and includes nearly 1,000 mediators. See listing information.

Building on its position with Google and overall site traffic, Mediate.com recently developed MediatorDirect Area Code and Statewide Banner marketing opportunities. MediatorDirect places links for up to 12 mediators (no more than 3 in a single practice area) at the top of every page of Mediate.com for all visitors from that area code. To give you a sense of scale, there were 203,288 click-throughs to MediatorDirect Panelists during the first 11 months of 2005 (24,395 in 11/05 alone). This is more than double the rate compared with the previous year.

Mediate.com also offers a Statewide Banner option that displays a client banner on all pages of the Mediate site for all visitors from one or more states. Here, the geographic exposure is greater (state vs. area code), but the dynamic banner is a bit lower on the Mediate.com site. Baners can be directly edited by clients. Real time access to page view and click through statistics is provided for both MediatorDirect and Statewide Banners.

Video Development

In addition to Mediate.com Internet and marketing, Mediate.com is focused on the development of professional and public educational DVDs and video streaming resources. We currently have a DVD Library featuring eight professional training titles:

• Strategic Negotiation with Randy Lowry and Peter Robinson
• Culture & Gender in Negotiation & Mediation with Nina Meierding
• The Mediators: Views from the Eye of the Storm with 31 leading mediators
• Mediating Divorce Agreement with Jim Melamed
• The Craft of Collaborative Practice with Chip Rose
• Get Busy, Get Paid! with Randy Lowry
• The Lighter Side of Mediation with Don Saposnek and Chip Rose
• Improving Parent Child Relationships with Carol Lynn Morse

SPECIAL HOLIDAY SALE ON ALL DVDS -- 25% OFF DURING DECEMBER 2005!

MediateInside

Mediate.com video development includes “MediateInside” and Mediate.com’s “Snippet Data Base.”

MediateInside is a developing Mediate.com video subscription program for access to an ever-expanding set of presentations, interviews, news, humor clips and more. MediateInside will be offered in early 2006 and is related to “The Mediators: Views from the Eye of the Storm.” The complete interviews approximately 80 leaders in the coflict resolution field are being placed in MediateInside.

MediateInside will include access to the new Mediate.com "Snippet Data Base." This data base includes valuable video “snippets” (clips 30 seconds to 5 minutes long) that are categorized by key words for search. This allows you to have direct access to the most relevant video information. Stay tuned for MediateInside!

Mediate.com MeetingSpace

Mediate.com is also entering beta testing on its new MeetingSpace which flexibly allows for online professional secure and scalable discussion. Professionals already augment face-to-face communication with communication over the Internet, typically by "insecure" email. Mediate.com’s MeetingSpace will offer you a robust online professional communications environment that includes security and confidentiality at an affordable price. You can design your own MeetingSpace and then clone your space for future use. Courts, agencies and firms can establish standard MeetingSpaces for panelists to begin with.

Mediate.com's MeetingSpace includes:

• case management
• secure communication (SSL encyrption plus individual id/pw)
• unlimited participants and groups
• easy control over access rights
• notification options
• model spaces
• unlimited pages and discussions
• polling, solution evaluation and agreement creation

When the future often feels like yesterday, it is worth taking a deep breath after 10 years of development at Mediate.com. Without government or grant funding, Mediate.com has developed vast and free informational resources, an abundant readership, leading edge web site technology and compelling video content. Mediate.com tells the story of the mediation field and builds bridges between our profession and the world. Mediate.com is at the heart of building an effective mediation industry.

Perhaps most important, Mediate.com presents the humanity, creativity and spirit of the mediation movement. We are a marketplace of constructive thinking about conflict resolution.

If the future was not yesterday, it is surely today. We already see increased bandwidth adoption (cable and dsl) leading to the use of "on demand" video and audio (in addition to text). Whether the network is text, podcasts, blogging, or video, it is critical that quality mediation information is offered to these emerging and substantial networks. The mediation industry needs to rise to the modern media challenge if we are to expand our relevance.

Taking a second deep breath as we think about the next decade, you can be confident that Mediate.com will do its best to continue leading the way as "The World's Dispute Resolution Channel." We thank you for your support, ongoing contributions and for helping to spread the word about Mediate.com. Onward!

Jim Melamed, CEO
for Mediate.com

Biography

The views expressed by authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Resourceful Internet Solutions, Inc., Mediate.com or of reviewing editors.