This is a report detailing some of the landmarks in the development of a website for the Emeritus Assembly.
Late fall 2005. Celia Chow, who has a website of her own, mentioned Clifford L. Pelletier, a retired professor in computer science at CCSU as someone who might be able to give us some pointers re websites. Subsequently, In email exchanges. Professor Pelletier advised us on the pitfalls and traps to avoid should we proceed to have one and offered suggestions of domain name, content, and other issues. He has remained available to us for advice and even suggested the alternate domain name of CTemeritusassembly.org that we are using. However, it is only recently that he consented to be listed as advisor to the site.
Spring 2006. Judith Lefelar was approached not long after our contact with CLP for adivce as a friend had indicated she has her own website. As it turned out, she had volunteered her web disigner services to a nuimber of non-profit organizations and she came on board to help us set one up. A work group with EA members C. Welna, M. Rogers, R. Wurst, T. Killeen, N. Welchman, K. McGrory, W. Giger and M. Giger met with JL on 2/21/2006. JL showed the group a model that she referred to as the test site and the instructions on how to access the site and upload files. This model site is still in cyber space as an example of her volunteer work with us at http://geocities.com/aaupctem/. Members were so pleased with the web pages shown at the 4/10/06 meeting that Mort Tenzer's motion to go for a regular site passed with all but one abstention. The site was registered on 4/18/2006. On 5/9/2006 Judith Lefelar met with the assembly members and presented what she has accomplished. Again, her work was very well received. Plan was to meet with her again for lessons on how to maintain and update this site. Unfortunately, this did not happen. Many things intervened, such as her work situation, the changes of the system used by the server and so forth. On 6/29/07. she notified us that she is too busy to maintain the site and did not renew the domain.
Fall 2006. August 20, 2006. The hard drive on a computer that had stored the content submitted by senior members for use on the site crashed. Fortunately many articles were saved by the senders and were reconstituted. Lesson learned. Need to have more than one place to keep the rich cache of documents safe. A holding tank site, www.eact.info was registered on 10/18/06 to serve as an interim measure until we could get back to work with the other site. The category Legacies now holds the EA's constitution and by-laws, its mission statement, a write up of the first 10 years of the assembly's existence by its first secretary Barbara Mckillop, and a write up of the second ten years by C. Welna. Another valuable contribution is Mary Rogers' record of its total schedule since its founding. Mary Rogers and C. Welna contributed to this segment of the site, retrieving the information and retyping them and formatting them to be put onto the site. David De Nuccio contributed the writing on the process of developing the mission statement and the statement itself. In addition to the collective wisdom depicted by the above, an about us page by Richard Wurst rounds out the description of the EA from a structural point of view. Included also are minutes of meetings by the then secretary C. Welna and now David De Nuccio, selected pages from the EA newsletter (Mary Rogers, editor until this fall), news from the AAUP Connecticut State Conference, Officers' reports, and an assortment of program notes by the event coordinators, notably Nicholas Welchman and Fred Cazel. The plan was to have 4 or 5 sets of minutes a year, 2 or more notes re state news from Morton Tenzer, some pages from the newsletter which is published twice a year, and some program notes, if they are either previews or advanced copies of items to be featured in the upcoming newsletter. There is a list of EA officers and how to reach them. And, as Judith Lefelar had tried to imbue the sites that she constructed for the EA, the eact.info site also attempts to reflect the underlying motto of "celebrate retirement".
Things happen, events occur. As new items are submitted for posting, it becomes clear that the site has taken on more and more a contemporary flavor. Announcements needed to be made, members needed to be informed timely, and items potentially of interest to members come from various sources. The site has sometimes been used for announcements, including several from Florence Hatcher of the AAUP CT State Conference regarding its annual conference, the passing of George Lang,, the rally of Yale graduate assistants in New Haven, and others. Information regarding the service for John Kolega, beloved long time treasurer of the EA, was posted there.
There are now three ways for members to have input to the site: the blog, hot topics, and web commentary. In addition, photographs, such as those provided by Kathleen McGrory, taken during members' Rose Garden outing this past spring, were uploaded for viewing. And, as new items come up, if they are rather brief, they are posted right on the home page. If they are of some length, separate pages are made for them with short descriptive notations pointing to their existence. The newer items usually appear on top of the page and as more and more come in, older items are removed, some to a new directory of archives. It may seem to have been a long time, with so many occurrences, but the site has nothing older than one year at this point. Some structural items such as those pointing to about us, and the availability of newer input to the newsletter, minutes, state news etc., however, remain on the home page.
Spring 2007. As the website grew in a number of directions in its functions, so have the patchwork effect of the home page become more and more pronounced. When C. Welna's retirement from her second stint as EA secretary was announced during the first spring meeting of this year, we saw an opportunity to recruit her assistance in trying to streamline the home page and to evaluate the web site in general. That she has been enlisted as helper for the website was announced at the executive planning meeting of 2007 as well. So far, she has been using positive feedback to reinforce different aspects of the site. And, as it appears that the eact.info site has morphed into the only site for the EA for the moment, (on 9/4/2007, the domain of CTemeritusassembly.org was added to it), her help to sort things out and to edit content, advise on policy matters, will be most welcome. We are aware that for folks who have been following the development of the site and have been regular visitors, the home page is easy to follow and an efficient way to alert people to the latest issues at hand. However, it is felt it needs to be more user friendly for those who use it for references now and then. This then leads to the next experimental step.
Fall 2007. The use of the blog as the new home page. In trying to simplify the home page, we revisited the instructions on using the blog as the first or home page for a site. If the experiment of using the blog as the new home page, beginning 11/4/2007 is well received, it could separate out the alert function that the old home page has been serving, which in itself will streamline the old home page some. In addition, it may be possible to develop the old home page as a site index or site map page, using software that can be downloaded from Google or some other sites. It has been found that the blog is the most popularly viewed page, not counting the old home page that one needs to access in order to get to the other pages, having twice as many hits as the next most often viewed pages. Nevertheless, folks have been hesitant to directly input into it. Hopefully, as the use of it as the new home page continues, this may change. And, in this context, we are hoping to recruit a blogger who will systematically update its entries. This would, or could bypass the current system of calling attention to new items by email to a small group of members who have either participated in the establishing of the website or have expressed interest in doing so.
Contributors to the website www.eact.info and www.ctemeritusassembly.org development and/or content include: Clifford Pelletier, Nicholas Welchman, Tim Killeen, Cecilia Welna, Mary Rogers, Kathleen McGrory, David De Nuccio, Fred Cazel, Vernon Nelson, Richard Wurst, Morton Tenzer, Compton Rees, Flo Hatcher and others. Thanks a lot!!! For starting us on the way to have a website, we thank Judith Lefelar.
