Hi everyone:
I wanted to announce that the Assistant State Coordinators for this new
term are going to be:
Brianne Kelly-Bly
and
Linda K. Lewis
Please update your county sites to reflect their names and link their email
addresses as follows:
Brianne Kelly-Bly will remain the same - if she is not listed on the main
page of your site, please make sure you add her now. bkbnj(a)optonline.net
Linda K. Lewis would like you to use: webmaster(a)cottonhills.com.
So if you could all do the following, I would very much appreciate it:
1. Update the ASC information on your main page
2. Update your copyright notices to the current year - mainly this lets
visitors know that the site is being maintained and not fallen by the
wayside
3. Update and/or add the notice of: Last Updated: with either the month
and year or full date
4. Add a "What's New" to your page. If you have a "What's
New" page
already, can you please update that page?
Additionally, I'm looking for volunteers to assist with reviewing and
redesigning our Guidelines. Please send me a private message if you would
please volunteer. We've needed this done for quite some time and it isn't
fair to you or to any new CCs to come on board and be faced with guidelines
that are not in alignment with the national. No state guidelines can
conflict with the national. At one point, a prior SC had sort of
"insisted" that everyone maintain their sites at Rootsweb. I would allege
that most of us know that went by the wayside, and rightfully so, No one
can TELL you where to put your web site. I totally understood the
reasoning behind that request, but we all know that many have exited from
RW.
So, without volunteers, I promise you that I WILL REWRITE THEM WITHOUT YOUR
INPUT! Um-kay? LOL
Also, I am heartily requesting that if you should, for any reason, decide
to leave NJGenWeb, that you please leave the materials that you have added
and more specifically that you haven't added, for the next county
coordinator. It seems to me that sometimes people do all that work to
"help researchers" and then something happens, a CC gets angry, and they
resign and take everything with them. We have, for the most part, been
pretty lucky in that aspect that when a CC has resigned, they have left all
of their materials here. I know that I fully intend to leave everything on
the sites that I have if and when I should leave New Jersey, whether it is
on the county site or on the state page.
I will most likely be moving the state page to a Google site. I know we
discussed this once before. Personally, I am not in a position to pay for
a separate domain and currently I still do not have the ability to work on
a web site that is not maintained on Google. I may be able to in the
future but for now I don't. So, please be aware that the site will most
likely be moving. I will give you a heads up so that you can change your
links to the state site. However, I want the ability to work on the state
page without NEEDING to ask one of the ASCs to do the revisions. I will be
providing to the ASCs the information they will need to get into all of my
New Jersey sites, as well as the required mail list. I am 60 years young,
but realize that should something happen to me, the NJGenWeb needs to be
able to keep moving forward. (I do have to drive regularly on I-95 from
Miami Beach to Boca Raton (a great highway when everything is going well,
but is well-known for major and multiple accidents, and it is at least an
hour from here to Boca. I also sometimes travel further north to Boynton
Beach. I plan to be moving further north later this year, but when and
where have yet to be determined. Suffice it to say I will be back in or
near Boca Raton. Miami Beach has been fun, but I'm ready to quit the long
commute on the days that I do have to travel.)
I am going to ask my ASCs to become familiar with Google sites so I can
make requests of them to make revisions to the state page. Also, should
anything happen to me, or should I leave NJGenWeb for any reason, I want
them to have full ability to move the site to where they need to place it,
or they will be able to leave the site there until they and/or a new SC
choose to move it.
I have been working with a long-time friend who is an attorney and we
market the company's services to attorneys in South Florida to do
bankruptcy petitions. I am also in the process of getting a new business
up and running and have joined the Florida Association of Legal Document
Preparers, which handles numerous types of matters for pro se individuals
(simplified divorces, landlord-tenant matters, trusts, probates, student
loans, etc.). My goal is to be very busy with that for my day-to-day
earnings, as well as working with my friend handling bankruptcy petitions.
We are also starting another division for credit repair. I anticipate
being fairly busy, but just so you know, in the last 20-25 years, nothing
replaces my genealogy! LOL
Also, if you need assistance in getting materials for your site, please let
me, Brianne or Linda know. I have a renewed commitment to New Jersey being
one of the best states in GenWeb. Let's create team here. Two states that
really stand out to me are Iowa and North Carolina. They have a great team
of people making a difference for their counties and state. I know we are
small compared to the number of counties in most states, but that doesn't
mean we can't make a huge impact. New Jersey is full of history and
information and materials. Not everyone has the same abilities to access
many materials. Many researchers are older individuals and their abilities
to travel and sometimes their physical inabilities prohibit them from
finding material unless we make it available to them. Let's start rocking
New Jersey.
On the flip side, if you don't want to or you just ain't gonna, is it time
to turn your site over to another coordinator? I don't know. Only you can
decide that. However, if you just aren't going to do anything for your
county, let me know. If you need a transcriber, let's devise ways and
means to find one. Place a request on your web site. Lots of times I have
found folks who want to participate in assisting. Finding, typing,
supplying materials.... these folks are out there, but if you make no
effort, you'll get no results.
So there you have my epistle for the start of this new term. I hope it
isn't too overwhelming, but I'd really like to see some drastic results
over the next two years. We can do this. We can be a team that provides a
great research site for surfers.
What do you think?
Thanks everyone.
Denise