After the Convention

So, it's been a couple of weeks, and the Convention has been over for a week now. By all accounts which I can see, it was a great success, generating a profit, and a fun time was had by all.

From the Board meeting, a $1000 fund will be established so that Di and his gang can finally go buy off-the-shelf products to test for Conformance. This is a Big Deal. It begins to give a little more teeth to the C&I boys. Pay attention to the SR pages over the next few months and we'll see how this goes.

Tom Draper is retiring from the Treasurer post after mumblety-mumble years. Kevin Feeney will be taking his place as CFO.

2010 Elections are beginning to open for Nominations. At-Large World Wide Director, Atlantic Director, and Western Director will be up for grabs in 2010.

So, part of my point is that it is going to be a busy weekend. There are a BUNCH of updates yet to do....BOD draft minutes, updates to Official minutes, AP reports for June, Convention debriefs, banquet award lists...the works.

It's also time to change the logo for the upcoming convention. Hartford still needs a link for a bit to get to the photos of the contest winners and such, but it's time for Milwaukee to take the stage. Watch for that in the coming week.

Some of the larger news, I guess to me anyway, is that we'll begin the march towards a CMS this week, too. I've proven to myself that I can make the site look like what I want it to without a tremendous amount of time and effort. So, look for those changes in the next 4-5 weeks. This will also pave the way for the "members only" portions for features such as forums and renewals and other goodies that will show there is a benefit to having an NMRA membership.

What I want to do is to have nmra.org be more of a "portal" into the world rather than a bunch of, let's face it, boring static pages. They need some life. We need the links to Facebook and Twitter and so forth. It needs to be more 22nd century. There needs to be more linkage between nmra.org and SR and HQ. For instance, I got my SR yesterday, opened it up, and found that the Howell Day Museum has a livestock car offered. I ask you, shouldn't that be paralleled on nmra.org and the nmra store? I would think so. Interestingly, I cannot figure out how to order it online. Hmmm. Guess I need to go fix that.

OK, time for bed. I'll get the updates done over the weekend. Look for several tweets as this happens, although I have a Vivaldi Orchestra concert Sat night.

Later, campers.