NMRA Webmaster's Blog

6 months? Seriously?

2010-03-17T21:56:00.002-05:00

Wow. I am so sorry. It has been six months since I posted a blog entry. That is just not right. OK, here goes.

I got sucked in to being the IT Department Head, not just the "web guy" (with a really GREAT web team), and have neglected a few things for those of you who may follow this. And that shouldn't happen.

I am still working on the new site, the Drupal site, which will give us access to the elusive and much talked about Member's Only pages, including Bulletin Boards, and other protected content. You will need your member number as printed on the front of Scale Rails, and your Postal Code as identifying marks.

I guess I will also need to come up with a privacy policy to post, and a way for people to opt out of things. Once I can get his site to a CMS, things should become much easier and richer.

I have had a couple of emails about formatting the current home page, as well as content. There are currently a number of initiatives going on, and everybody wants top billing. There is the Regions and Divisons initiative, the Diamond Club initiative, the UP Engine thing, and the normal Regions focus. This led me to have a random image for you when the home page loads. Unfortunately, not all the images at the time are the same size, which is presenting problems. Yeah, I know. Trying to get that fixed, but in the mean time, you'll have a sloppy home page since my bosses want all of this displayed one way or another.

One thing stuck in my craw, I just read a post by the PNR Prez, Jack, who was telling the R&D group all the things which would make us great. What I DON'T have is an email from said PNR Prez offering his services to me to help realize that objective. OR, an email to me stating his dissatisfaction with the existing communications. It seems that it is easier to criticize than to help.

We are a young Department. I am still working to get it going. There was just so much wrong with things that need to be addressed at an operational level that the business of the membership is taking a back seat. I mean things like leases running out. Backups not happening. Software not paid for. These are the "heart attack" things I and my guys have been dealing with. The "common cold" things are lingering, and those are the things which you notice. But, I assure you, they are secondary to letting the overall organization fail.

We're getting better, I promise. It's just taking longer than I thought.

Anybody else want to volunteer to help?

Thanks, and see you next week (hopefully).

Trying to get back to it...

2009-08-23T19:53:00.002-05:00

Well, the ideal was to do a column each week, probably on Sunday. I was off for a few weeks, but am trying to get back in the habit of writing something each Sunday.

So, here we are. I am not greatly pleased about the progress my team has made to get the "members-only" section up. We seem to be stuck trying to figure out the authentication. I am close to just saying, "whatever" and letting people get in with me being the moderator and approving everything. It would actually make things kinda easy at the moment.

In the meantime, there has been some things happening on the Yahoo Groups. Cap'n Billy has kept them stirred up, and Eric D. actually went in and tried to defend him. I think it wasn't quite successful, but we'll see how the membership responds.

The NMRA Budget Meeting will be held Oct 20 in Cincinnati. All the Dept heads will come together and try to put together something which give us some revenue. This will be my first, and I am looking forward to it to see how things try to work internally. I have some ideas about what should happen...we'll see if they do.

I've posted the September Prescar and Bulletin, and will be posting the August AP report online soon. I'll let folks know via Twitter when that is done. We are also now using #NMRA on the Twitter feeds to see if we can get up the totem pole in usage. Doubt it, but at least we have our own thing.

There's been a new update to the EHB, updates to the National Train Show, and some others. We have updated the Train Show to be more compliant with the overall branding effort, as well as to rewrite the page to be XHMTL compliant. It now works in all browsers except, of course, for IE 8. But really, does anybody really use that?

I also took all the numbers off of the Pioneers section in the Honors section. We all agreed they weren't necessary.

Stay tuned....doing some good stuff behind the scenes. Hope to have something for you in next two weeks.

Thanks!

New Directions

2009-08-20T22:35:00.002-05:00

OK, I suck. It's been a month and this is the first post in what is supposed to be a weekly column. Anyway, I have asked Fred Bock to help with defining a new schema for the National DB. Fred seems to be charged for this, which is good, since my normal posse is engaged with day-to-day operations of the site.

I did send a note to the contractor who has been working with us and he seems to be amenable to giving us the schema and DDL for the site.

I'm thinking that I'll ask Ben and Fred and Dan if they want to join as part of the IT Department. They have had some really good ideas in the past, and I would appreciate their input in forming the "go forward" strategy.

Scott should be getting close to finishing the DB part and the CSS part of the "new" CSS site. We'll eventually move everything over to the Drupal part so that the IPC can work more on structure and less on content. Lord knows, I spend about 20 hours a week right now on content. That's 15 hours I could be spending on modeling. I swear, I can't remember that last time I spent some substantive time on modelling, be it track plan, or construction, or structures, or anything.

Just yesterday, my son showed me a structure he scratch-built from scrap styrene and a soda can to make a fuel tank. It was a very good effort. I was envious.

Anyway, we're making progress. We should have things up in another 2 weeks, I hope. Stay tuned, and stay tuned to Twitter and Facebook for the latest updates.

After the Convention

2009-07-24T23:23:00.002-05:00

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.

Once more into the breach, my friends!

2009-07-06T19:09:00.002-05:00

OK, so I'm not the world's greatest blogger, I guess. How many times do I have to fall on my sword?

Anyway, it's now been a month since my last post, and that is not what I signed up to do. BUT...it has been a good month. Not only did I go on vacation to the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico, but we are now officially a Department. I am now the Department Head for the IT Department, which makes me the CIO, I guess.

Getting closer on a number of the initiatives I promised; the forums are pretty much ready, just waiting for the authentication methods we have to devise. Looking at a couple - quadodo is one, and then the Drupal auth method, too. Leaning towards the Drupal methods as it will save some time down the road, but may be a bit more work. We have to decide what pieces of information we need to require to register and identify you guys. Membership number is a given, but then what else? ZIP Code? DOB? Working on that. We don't want SPAM and 'bots in the forum.

I am working on a straw man of a new page design that we can roll out with the new CMS effort. This will be more of a portal implementation, and I hope that it will closely align with Tony Koester's vision of branding everything which is not tied down as part of nmra.org. There was even some talk of discontinuing Scale Rails and just having a web version. Personally, I don't think that is a good idea, but I am not on the BOD. So, we'll see what happens.

So, at the BOD meeting, I understand that all the Motions were passed, so we have some new Standards. Information on this will happen when Di gets back home and sends me the updates. Basically, S1, S2 and S4 were updated, and some changes were made to RP25, I think. Full information can be found on the NMRA home page in the News section.

Lots of new chatter in the new Regions and Divisions Yahoo Group which Bill Kaufman set up. I encourage you to join this group if you are not already a member. Much good information.

OK, that's what I have for tonight. I will do my best to get back to a more regular schedule - my intent is weekly, but if I can come up with more information I will do this more often.

I encourage you to visit the home page which has new Region information it. The focus has changed from a lame "Webmaster's Choice" which I seldom updated after Roger gave it to me, to a more relevant "Region Focus" which I hope makes things more personable and local.

Until next time....

Sadly neglected

2009-06-08T19:23:00.002-05:00

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!

New Updates

2009-05-10T20:09:00.004-05:00

Well, work has gotten in the way for the last couple of weeks, but I have clawed my way out of that. After two straight days of slaving in front of the computer, the Site is fairly well up-to-date. And, boy, are there updates. Look at the News section on the Home page for some details, but there are new Contest forms, three Standards which are going to the BOD for final approval, and the Minutes from the Mid-Year meeting of the BOD. If these links don't work, you can find them through the Home page. In addition, the AP Awards have been updated through March of 2009.

So, yes, we've been busy. Region elections have been reflected, as well as other topics. Has anyone checked out the new Calendar? No? Check it out. We are experimenting with Google Calendars and trying to keep things at a Region level, right now.

Have been spending some time trying to see if we can get the AP Awards in an XML format. That way, we can do some sorting which we can't do now. We'll experiment with this on the AP stuff, as well as on thw C&I Warrants. It may be a little more easier on the Warrants, as they are moe straightforward format-wise. We'll see.

Have not done as much work on the Forum and the CMS as I would have hoped. I want to get the CMS done in the next week or two so that the page owners can begin to do a lot of this work theirselves. Plus, I go for a week at the beach next month and on't want ot have to be tinking about updates while I lounge in the sun with an umbrella drink!

What else...? Oh, elections are coming due. Your ballots should all be in the hands of the Election Committee by now. Best of luck to all the candidates. We will know the results in about 2-3 weeks I think.

Also, the Region Presidents and Membership Chairs should all have been notified by now that they have access to the National Membership database. They will be able to see those members in their own Region, as well as download via Excel for their own purposes. Updates will still go through HQ for QA purposes, but within the next couple of months, individual members will be able to update their profiles.

I think those are the high spots, but there have been a bunch of them over the last two weeks. I'll post next week and see how far we get with integrateing the database into the Forum, Site, and Wiki so that one registration will entitle all to the other things.

Happy Mother's Day!

2009-04-26T16:23:00.002-05:00

Hi!

Well, sorry about not posting last week. Got caught up in a whole lotta stuff like work and family and other things like that. I had hoped that with the end of college basketball that I could get caught up on things, but the wife insisted that we get the summer vacation confirmed, so spent a fair amount of time handling that. I am happy to report, for those who care, that it has been handled and the family is confirmed for a week on the beach before the Convention (Gulf Shores in June...anybody else gonna be there?). And, I'm almost done updating my commercial sites and getting THAT stuff out of the way.

So, what's new? You should see that there are some new ads on the home page advertising the new contest events at the National. I have a few other miscellaneous updates to make, including the March AP updates. One thing I am trying to do is to see if it makes any sense to use XML to do those updates. If so, I can have Rick make the updates in Excel and just send me that file, and then I can save that.

On the Twitter front, we are getting a lot of SEO folks following us. I think we have 14 followers now, and a couple of them are even model railroaders. On the other hand, the Facebook group is up to 175 members. Go figure which social network is more popular. I'm thinking that Twitter is probably not a method we are going to use to communicate with the membership. But, nobody seems to be taking leadership on the Facebook forum.

On the substantive front, both the wiki and the forum are now "production ready." Those following this blog can check both out at http://www.nmra.org/wiki/ and http://www.nmra.org/forum/ and even sign up if they should so feel inclined.

We are still working on the Content Management System (CMS). Those technically inclined may be interested to know that we have selected Drupal as our first stab at this. If it doesn't work for us, we'll look of Joomla. British Region is already looking at Joomla. My personal and professional opinion is that Drupal will serve us better, but we'll see. As soon as we can get the directories and permissions good, we'll start customizing it. This is important. Let me say it again....this is important. What it lets us do is to have the page owners do their updates themselves on the main part of the site. This lets the IPC concentrate on breaking news and allows the various dept heads to update things like member status, AP updates, Minutes, and so forth themselves.

What else? Well, we're looking at the NMRA database and seeing how we use that to make a user authentication file for the wiki/forum/site so that we can offer additional services to the membership. We'll sort that over the next month or so.

Tuning in to "As the NMRA Turns" we see that, like many soap operas, not much has changed in the last two weeks. Sniping is still occurring, and facts and reality are being summarily ignored. I swear, if these people were actual journalists, most of them would be fired for failing to check sources and facts before publishing articles. That's called irresponsible journalism at the least, and libel at some point. The big thing last week was whether or not the NMRA was in compliance with the PCI regs. I am pleased to announce that we are. As a surprise to a number of people who seem like they would like to see the NMRA in non-compliance with Federal regulations (we are, by the way...). Any credit card number you input on the NMRA site and NMRASTORE is secure. Anyway, Leone is putting up a vigorous front trying to defend some sense of reality, but he may get overrun eventually. Sort of like Johnson at Shiloh, but that's another story....

The good news is that May 1st is coming soon and the election will be decided one way or another. I figure that it will give the "talking heads" on TRAINEDITORS more fodder to use for making traffic on the Group. Don't know yet if it will have any more substantive content than it does so far, but it sure does make for interesting reading. Helps me out when the fiction section of the library is backed up.

Speaking of the Library (see what I did there...?), we should be able to unveil the new Library site shortly. We have talked with Brent, and have revamped the Library to put it in the same template as the rest of the site. As we did that (thanks, Scott!), we have made it easier to search and find things on that site. Frankly, the old site was a disaster. You couldn't find anything, had to click 5 or 6 time to get to someplace where you actually had reasonable content....gak. Let's be frank....it was ugly. Scott has straightened that out and it looks a WHOLE lot better. Anyway, stay tuned, its coming, as soon as Brent gives his ok.

OK, I'm going back to updating my commercial sites for another hour or so, then I have to get back to the backlog of NMRA requests. In the meantime, I'll keep rocking out to Styx on the radio and see what's coming next....

Hey, we have the Kentucky Derby and Cinco de Mayo coming...get festive!

Later.

Happy Easter

2009-04-12T21:34:00.002-05:00

Well, what a day. Tiger almost came back, and Phil almost got a shot, but in the end, it was the Angel who triumphed. Yes, I'm talking the Master's which distracted me through much of the last couple of days. Nevertheless, I managed to cull my "to-do" list quite a bit. For those of you tracking here on the "beta" list, the Wiki is in final test, as I think I have gotten the URL redirection complete, and that is out for beta review. Also, the first steps in the forums have been done, and I am only waiting on the name of the database to roll that out to the membership.

I have also been able to catch up on a lot of the email traffic from the last week or so. A lot of chatter in the Traineditors forum, some good, some just ok. A lot of thought provoking things, but really nothing concrete as far as agreement on which way to go.

I think that I have broken the code on using the Google calendars, and have nailed up a prototype at http://www.nmra.org/calendar.html. This will eventually take the place of the current "lame" calendar in the Nav section.

Finally, the Contest pages have taken center stage with the lead in photo. Click through to the new contest pages and see what Bob Hamm and his group have done.

More changes are coming...stay tuned.

Survey results ready

2009-04-05T20:14:00.002-05:00

Hi, folks. The much anticipated results of the convention survey are now ready, and I have posted them at nmra.org. Use the NEWS link to see the lead-in and the link to the PDF of the full survey results. Interesting reading. And, Mike's column for the May issue of Scale Rails has some summarization of things. I've posted that colum already in the PRESCAR section under Publications from the nav sections.

We have also done some pretty significant updates to the Contest pages. You can look at the new pages which Bob Hamm and his crew have written at nmra.org/convention/contests/.

Trying to get the 2009 posts of the AP awards up. One thing we are doing is moving to an XML based format which will allow people to search by Region, Award or month as they wish. I hope to have that up later tonight, but may be Monday or Tuesday. Frankly, if its not tonight, it will be Tuesday since I have to watch the Tarheels crush those dreaded Spartens in the Championship game. After that, all we have to look forward to is baseball. So, it will be a good time for me to start re-building my layout. It has been dormant for about 5 years now, and it is time to resurrect it.

Don't forget to get your election ballots back to HQ. They must be postmarked by May 1 to count. This election is is important, as aren't they all, but be sure to vote.

Thanks, and see you in a few days.

Long time no post....

2009-03-29T19:48:00.002-05:00

Hi, campers. Sorry for the long delay in posting. A number of things got in the way, including daughter's return home for Spring break, work, NCAA Tournament, and misc other activities. Now, I'm back, and bad, and ready to post.

First thing to mention is the passing of Bill Briggs. Bill was member #74 of the Twin Cities Division and he passed away last week. Bill had a superb layout which will be featured in an upcoming Kalmbach video. Also, Bill was VERY active in local community activities including the Rotarians. He will be missed.

On the NMRA front, your election ballot should be mailed back to HQ by now. Although you have another month, what's the point in waiting? It will give them a little more time to count things and not degenerate into another Minnesota-style election. Oh, wait, they're in Tennessee, so it may not work that way.

The survey results are pretty much ready and should be posted in about two weeks. I'll post a link on the home page shortly informing the membership about that. Also, in case you missed it, we've posted the articles from the last 12 months of Scale Rails MMR articles on the website, too. You can find them at this link.

Also, you should know that we are updating the Library section of the site, too. As part of the cost reductions, we had to let one of the staffers go, and he was the one updating the site. As a result, the IPC has taken over this responsibility, and should unviel the section within the next 30 days. It will feature the same look-and-feel as the main site, as well as offer updated inventories and a cleaner navigation scheme through the section. Stay tuned for that.

OK, I need to go work on some other stuff, including teaching my son how to make a wash. Probably something which needs to go on the Beginner's pages, but is not there yet. Until next week, see you then.

Go Heels.

Birthday Eve

2009-02-27T22:02:00.005-06:00

Yeah, well, vanity. It is the evening before I leave my youth. Tomorrow, I turn 50 and join the AARP. Bummer. The wife has already given me my card and made a production of it. All good-matured fun, and I feel fine. It has been four weeks since I stopped smoking and I feel better. I smell better, too.

In the meantime, we are up to 85 members in the NMRA Facebook Group. Only a little bit of discussion, but it is still early. On the LinkedIn Group, we are up to 4 members, so Facebook is obviously a better place for us than LinkedIn for the purpose of spreading the word.

I have no updates yet on the error by the printer on the ballot. I sent a note to the President of NMRA asking if any more guidance was forthcoming. In the meantime, as a reminder, the printer will be paying for a new mailing of ballots with the sticky label on it. Look for it in your mailbox in the next week.

I've been doing a little bit of research to see if SaaS applications would be sufficient for us to use. In most cases, the answer is no. Google Sites MIGHT work in some limited circumstances, but for it to truly work would require the expenditure of money, and we would prefer not to do that. It looks like we'll need to install our own Forum software, if we want to offer that service.

In other SaaS news, I still only have 4 people following the blog, and 6 people on Twitter, 4 of which I suspect are SEO people, 1 is Eric, and the other is me. But, that's ok, at least we have a following!

In update news, the articles which appeared in Scale Rails over the last twelve months have been posted to the web site. You can find them by following the links to the Achievement Pages. Look for the link to the "Master Pages."

The January issue of the Bulletin will be posted shortly, as soon as Rick Shoup decides if he likes a new format I set out for him.

That's it for now. I'm tired, as I should be at this age, and will post more in the next few days. Stay tuned.

Updates on February 24th

2009-02-25T20:25:00.004-06:00

OK, it's been a week since I last posted, which is probably a bit long. On the other hand, nobody seems to be reading these posts, despite all the white noise on a Yahoo board about the need for things like this. At any rate, I will continue to blog, since that is what the vocal minority of the membership seems to want. Hey, Web 2.0, right? Whatever that means...I mean, I'm a senior management person in IT at my company, and I still don't know what that means. Neither does Gartner, but that's another story. I spent 3 minutes going through an IVR today at Wells Fargo to just GET to someone live to whom I could talk. and they TOLD me I needed to talk to a live person. I'm sure that 3 minutes does not count against their AHA or ASA. Oh, well, I got my automatic payment set up, anyway. It took 4 minutes with the agent to do that. I would think that Web 2.0 could reduce that to 2 minutes. Whatever.

So. What's happened in two weeks. A lot of chatter has passed through one of the Yahoo boards, with a couple of people thinking that the NMRA is going to go bankrupt any minute. Even though we don't qualify for a stimulus package, I can assure you, we are not going to go belly up anytime soon. Yes, things need to be done, but the "Chicken Little" folks need to get a grip. I mean, it's not like we have cancer or something. I can redirect you to a blog of someone who does, if you want to follow that.....

Substantively, a new DCC Manufacturer ID has been issued for DCC Supplies and Krois-Modell, and we hope to see product from these companies soon.

In other news, I have moved several items from the News section of the home page over to the archived News page. Many of these items have been hanging around since September, so it's time, it's time....

Also, we have made changes to the navigation section of the main Achievement Page to coincide with the other pages in that section, so navigation should be consistent. Also, if you click on the "Masters Articles" link in the left Nav area, you will now see entries for the articles from 2008 Year of the MMR from Scale Rails. These articles are in PDF form, and we have received permission from the authors to post them for the membership to review. Enjoy. I hope that they will inspire you to fill out the paperwork to become an MMR.

If you are interested in the DCC Working Group, they will be gathering during the Nuremburg Toy Show. See Reinhold or Stan for more information, and get your reservations done.

That's it for now. I'll go back to reading the Eric & Ray campaign bulletin, er, I mean the Yahoo newsgroup now. Watch for further updates over the next week to NMRA.ORG.

Happy modeling!

Valentine's Day Week

2009-02-17T22:26:00.002-06:00

OK, so maybe not Valentine's Day week, but close enough. The Yahoo Group for the Editor's has been quite busy, and I have been monitoring it with great interest. Understandably, I could not keep out of it, so I lobbed a hand grenade in there tonight. The premise of the group seems to be HOW to communicate with the membership. What I wanted to point out was, it was not so much HOW to communicate but WHAT to communicate. I mean, we can use a variety of channels to provide the membership with information, but if the quality of information is inferior, then what does it matter if someone is on dial-up vs. broadband? We need to have more information about the agendas, the decisions, the debate than we do now. Even my local town coucil has the entire consent agenda published ahead of time. I'm sure that the Board has their own communication channel to share the agendas...why not share that information in public via the NMRA webiste, or push to the Regions or Divisions?

Other than that, we've updated the vendor information for the National Train Show. You should see new information about vendors and their booth numbers.

Other updates include a direct link (and early link) to a copy of the 2009 Ballot for National Elections. Here you can find information about the candidates, as well as a PDF which can be filled out online and printed. You will still need to attach your SR mailing label and send it in, but it is easy to fill out.

Time for me to retire to bed, so I can go do my day job. Stay tuned in the next couple fof days for further updates.

A week's work

2009-02-08T12:01:00.002-06:00

Well, it's been a week since the last post. I don't know if anyone is actually reading these things, but I'll keep doing them as a way to keep MY thoughts in order, anyway.

As I mentioned in the last post, I signed up for Twitter. I now have 2 followers, one of which is me, and the other is some domain/surfer dude in Peru. I don't know, maybe he's a stalker, too. Anyway, I've put a couple of tweets out there, so I hope that Peru is enjoying the latest edition of the Wig-Wag.

Putting the finishing touches on the skin for the wiki. The wiki should be available sometime this week, next weekend at the latest. Think of it as a Valentine's Day gift to the membership. Why a wiki, you ask? Not sure yet. One of the things about technology, and this organization, is that "if you build it, they will come." Not so much in my business life, but I've found that this group of people is VERY inventive. Who knows, maybe one day, it can take over the nmra.org website, and I can go back to model railroading. In any event, I could see that the wiki could stand in for the current Standards & Recommended Practices area of the site. That way, the S&C committee could do their own edits and updates as they need to.

Can't remember if I've mentioned it, but I've set up an NMRA group on LinkedIn, as well. Currently, it has 2 members -- myself and Eric Dervinis. If you are part of LinkedIn, the group is called Model Railroading. It's yet another way to connect with your fellow model railroaders as part of that whole community thing we talk about as part of NMRA membership.

So. Those are the highlights today. I'll continue to tweet through the week, and your next issue of Scale Rails should be coming to your mailbox soon, too. See ya later!

Social site linkages

2009-02-01T14:19:00.003-06:00

I signed up on Twitter today, using NMRAweb as the handle. Twitter is one of those up and coming new things, like Facebook. Twitter can, in fact, update your Facebook status. The thought here is that quick updates can be posted on Twitter, and those of you who also "tweet" can be alerted that a change has occured on the NMRA web site. You will have be sign up for Twitter, but if you haven't already, you are obviously just so 2007. Once on Twitter, you can search for NMRA and then "follow" those posts. You will get an alert when I tweet and then you can go and see what the deal is on the web site. Or the Convention site. Or whatever. I am also a member of the editors group, so I will also tweet when a new Division or Region publication comes out, if I know about it. Again, we'll see what happens with it. Right now, back to the Division web site, then continuing to configure the wiki.

What's the latest?

2009-01-31T22:06:00.005-06:00

So I've been spending a lot of time today trying to get the NMRA 2009 Screen saver done. There's a lot of programs out there, but few of them are freeware. I would like a freeware program so that I do not run into copyright issues or commercial issues as I create the 2009 screen saver. Also, I need to send the pix off to the asst. web guy so that we can create a script to scroll the pix on the home page during the year. These are the same pix as you see for the 2009 calendar. Did you make a contribution for the calendar? it's not too late!

The big news is the wiki. A lot of jokes have been going on at the bar about wikis, but we have a wiki for the NMRA. I need to finish the customization for it, then I'll let the BOD know, and then let the Editors know, and they can wiki to their heart's content!

Contest pages are all up-to-date, and a revamp of the Library pages will be coming soon.

Stay tuned!

What's coming?

2009-01-19T21:39:00.000-06:00

So we've been busy trying to improve the overall experience for the NMRA website. We've developed a calendar which should be debuting soon, as well as posting the articles from Scale Rails over the last year regarding the Year of the MMR. Look for these soon. There have been updates to the Contest pages, and you should be able to see those. I have not yet been able to see those due to some sort of technical difficulty, but we'll be restarting the HTTP service which should bring them online.

You can check out the latest AP roster report from December 2008, which will close out that year. At some point, we'll try a different format to present them to you, but right now, it's what we've got.

Also, we hope to bring some other new features to the site. Certainly this blog should keep people reading for at least a minute or two, and we'll get some other technology to keep people amused.

Also, look for upcoming changes to the Library site as we bring that part of the Site into compliance with the formatting and content you have so graciously embraced.

More later.

First post

2009-01-12T12:54:00.000-06:00

I am going to start a blog to do some ramblings about what is happening with the NMRA website. They will range in tone from new things and new items, to things we would like to do with the site.