The first issue of the EMBTI Electronic Journal was published on the Internet in August, at about the same time as the opening of the 1998 IEA Conference in Denver. The mission of this Electronic Journal, as stated on its front page, is to "explore human consciousness through a study of personality type".

This second issue of the EMBTI Journal announces a new message board that is part of an EMBTI information system that is integrated and interactive. We have decided to call this message board the 'Community Forum', because we hope that it will provide our website visitors with a forum in which they join into dialogue with us and other visitors on the topic of the relationship between the Enneagram and the MBTI, and related subjects.

This 'easy access' message board is now open to the Internet public, and you all are invited to explore its features. It too has the same mission as the EMBTI Journal - but this time through the media of an interactive message board. Your email letters to the editor since Issue #1 have demonstrated the need for a Community Forum like this where beginners and professionals alike can gather to engage in dialog on personality type systems such as enneagram personality types, MBTIŽ type, Keirsey Temperament, and Jungian type.

The editors, John Fudjack and Pat Dinkelaker, have asked me to keep my eye on the EMBTI Community Forum, and to act as a sort of host so that people can come together in a friendly electronic community. I have agreed to play this role because I believe that the EMBTI Electronic Journal is already playing an important role as a common electronic ground. The Community Forum is a logical next step to increase the common meeting ground for visitors, friends, and regular members of the EMBTI community.

It is our belief that there is much to learn at the common ground between systems such as the older MBTI TypeŽ, Keirsey Temperament, the newer Enneagram Personality Types, and Enneagram Processes. These proven long standing Type and Temperament systems have been in widespread use for over two decades, but new advances continue to be made by leaders in these fields. We will have an opportunity to report on and discuss some of their new publications in future issues of the Journal. The enneagram community can learn much from the published work of these pioneers. But we also believe that these pioneers can gain some new insights into the dynamics of human consciousness from an enneagram perspective. We have found that the language of Jungian psychology is very general and quite adaptable to the enneagram, in ways that many had not suspected before the published research and theory in Issue #1 of the EMBTI. The vision of a simple way to explain the dynamics of type and temperament has been elusive. But modern enneagram process theory presented at the EMBTI shows how fractal patterns can model how chaos or unconsciousness emerges into ordered patterns of consciousness. This benefits all type and temperament studies.

The Community Forum has several innovative features that integrate the Journal with the Community Forum with a single click of your "mouse". I'm speaking of your computer input device, of course, and not the small mammal clicking its teeth in the corner of your computer room. Yes, you do need some general familiarity with the Internet in order to read the on-line Journal and write messages at the Community Forum. We would like to think that this is a particularly good and 'user friendly' place to learn to do these things. I will try to illustrate this by walking you through the process on exploring the EMBTI Community Forum.

Walkthrough

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There are basically two ways to reach the Community Forum message board.

• First, you can click on one of various links at this site, and then bookmark the address or place it in your 'Favorites Folder'. Later, when you want to return directly to the Community Forum, just click your mouse on the address, cross your fingers, and if your computer modem is connected to your telephone line, then it will all happen automatically, and rather quickly if you have an up-to-date Browser.

• Or, imagine that you are reading an article in 'The Enneagram and the MBTI Journal' and want to comment on that article or ask a question. You can use the 'mail author' button at the top of the article, but now we have also added a 'comment' button, like the one at the top of this page. Click on the comment button and you will be taken directly to the 'Comment on Journal Articles' section of the Community Forum. Click on that tag and post a 'follow-up' comment. Your comments will appear at the Community Forum, where the author and/or anyone else can reply to you. The communication gets one step closer to being a genuinely interactive public dialogue. [Try clicking on the 'comment' button at the top of this article, and you'll see what I'm talking about].