Sadly neglected

Campers, I'm sorry I have neglected my duties to post here, and I offer no excuse. In the meantime, many exciting things have been going on! The wiki is pretty much ready to go, and the forum bulletin board is also ready, although Scott and Brian probably need to do some forum customization. The work on the CMS is proceeding anonce, and should be ready to roll out shortly. The crown jewel of all of this is that we'll also be debuting software which ties them all together for authentication -- one signon ID gets you access to everything, and we'll tie this to a verification of your NMRA membership. One extra step we'll have to do is to set up a Privacy Policy -- something which has been lacking for a while -- and will probably steal, ur, use BEST PRACTICES from one of the larger companies on the web. We'll see.

Those of you who actually LOOK at the website may have noticed that we've ditched the Webmaster's Choice section. There hasn't been a lot of updates here (I plead time commitments) and a LOT of clamoring to make the site more "real" for the membership. Thus, we have gone to highlighting a Region each month. Or at least that's the plan. We're starting off with a brief review of the Sunshine Region (SSR) Convention from a couple of weeks ago since I could cajole Rick SHoup into giving me some information on it. The LSR and TLR also have had Conventions recently and will likely be next up on the block.

Gerry Leone has been appointed by the President to fill a new role called "NMRA Communications Director." Gerry's first task will be to write his job description. In the meantime, he will be sending a monthly email blast to the Region President's with NMRA information. This is yet another way the National is responding to the desire of the Membership to have increased communication.

Yours truly has also been "promoted" to the IT Department Manager. The bulk of this job is the web staff, which has been going on for quite a while, but the EHB spells out a few other things. I'll get my brain wrapped around this increased workload in the next couple of weeks, and see if we can rationally employ technology where it will do the most good.

That's the highlights for the recent past. I'm sure there's other stuff, and the various Groups have been enjoying a high traffic volume of email messages. Stay tuned here or at the Twitter site for more updates!

Thanks!