All you other WECers are MISSING OUT

No Chadia, Susan won’t give you a class

Here we are studying hard:

Volunteers: what an essential component of our club. We thank all of you who have helped our organization…whether it’s serving on the board, helping on a committee, we appreciate everyone’s time and talent.

We had a wonderful October, starting with the Cannon Circle at Trina London’s. We enjoyed each other’s company and were treated to delicious food, and how about that view? At our October luncheon, we welcomed new member Ronnie Halpern, Beth Tobin of Starpack presented a business showcase, and Kim Stone, our speaker from the Miami Heat/American Airlines Arena, mesmerized us with her story.

We had a wonderful time at the Stranahan House Halloween tour. Several members were dressed in costume so please look for pictures on the website. Thanks to Carol Metevier, Susan Kingsley and her committee for organizing this event.

We have several events in November to look forward to: the luncheon on the 18^th, and a Cannon Circle at Barbara Moorman’s lovely store, Carroll’s Jewelers, on the 19th. At the luncheon, please don’t forget to bring food or cash for our annual food drive.

Somi Ali of No More Tears will be our speaker, discussing domestic violence. You won’t want to miss Linda Linder’s business showcase.

Two other big events on our calendar are the catamaran cruise on December 3^rd and the following day is the Pace Believing in Girls luncheon. WEC is an event sponsor of the Pace event so please attend if you can and show your support. You can rsvp to Melissa Rapkin or Chadia Meroueh.

There has been much discussion regarding our new website/blog (wecftl.com). The new format allows much more member interaction and we’ll be able to post articles at any time. If you have any questions regarding the new site, feel free to contact Chris Guld, our wonderful webmaster. Please continue to send in your news to Jenette Mathai.

As many of you know, attendance at our luncheons has grown tremendously, thanks to Jan Bullard and all of you who have invited guests. In order to have time for self introductions, the speaker and business showcase, we must start on time. I will be calling the meeting to order at noon sharp. If you would like to network, please feel free to come at 11:30 am. Also, be courteous during self introductions and limit your comments. Instead, please send them to Jenette Mathai to be included in the Grapevine. Thank you for your assistance in this matter.

Chris’s (aka Mrs. Geek) dreams have come true!  Google is flying her and her husband, Jim, out to their headquarters in Mountain View, California – better known as The Googleplex!  She will be speaking on a panel for an internal meeting of Google Support Services.  She will also be co-hosting a Webinar (seminar delivered over the Web) on using Picasa.  Picasa is a free program from Google for managing all your digital photo needs.  Chris has been teaching this program for many years and has video tutorials on her website: www.geeksontour.com

If you take digital photos, you really should take advantage of this free webinar and see our very own webmaster, Chris Guld, playing in the big league!  Here’s the link to register for the November 12 webinar.

“Explore”… So far this year I think we have done an excellent job of exploring our friendships, our business relationships and new events. For some, it might mean exploring a new committee or helping with our new blog. Wherever your interest lies please join us in exploration this year.

We had a busy month of September…we started off with Game Night at Carol Metevier’s home. We enjoyed each other’s company along with delicious food and of course the view was stunning. Somewhere along the way we did play a few games.

At our September meeting we were treated to a business showcase by Carol McKeever and watched an amazing video that she produced. Carol welcomed all of us to visit Lighthouse of Broward and tour the facility. Our speaker was our Jeryl Madfis’s husband, Michael. He talked about Smart Growth in our community and generated much discussion and questions from our members.

We had a Cannon Circle in September at Linda Linder’s home and had fun trying on her exclusive fashions. We marveled at her husband’s woodworking. Cannon Circles present a great opportunity to get to know your fellow members in a relaxed, fun atmosphere.

Events in October include a Cannon Circle October 6^th hosted by Trina London and our Stranahan House Wine & Cheese reception and haunted house tour. I’ve been told by one of our members who was a docent there for many years that it really is haunted. Guess we’ll have to go and see for ourselves!

At our luncheon we look forward to a business showcase by Beth Tobin and our speaker is Kim Stone, EVP/GM of the Miami Heat.

Many of you have had questions about navigating the website. Our webmaster Chris Guld will be back in town for the November meeting and will be updating us at that time.

In the meantime, you can access the current newsletter by clicking on “current newsletter” at the top of the page; no need to log into the old website. The old website does contain members’ contact information including address, email and phone numbers. We have several members working behind the scenes on our blog. We will still have a newsletter but to see up to the minute new information without having to wait until the monthly newsletter arrives, click on “blog” at the top of our website (wecftl.com).

Jenny Kelly

Personal and Website Background

With so many new members, I feel an introduction is in order: I’ve been a member of WEC since 1983, I joined when my business, Computer Savvy, was brand new.  WEC helped me from the startup phase, growth, and eventually selling of that business.  I am now traveling the country with my husband, Jim, in our motorhome and I have another business called Geeks on Tour. I plan to spend the winter in Fort Lauderdale this year, so I hope to be active in the club then.

I’ve always been in the Computer training and support field and I have seen it as my duty to the women of WEC to help them use computer technology to the benefit of the club.  In the 80s I took the membership data from a spreadsheet to a database so we could track member history, attendance, and the like.  In the 90s, when the web began, I made sure WEC had a website.  And, sometime after 2000, I took the printed newsletter to the web as well.  I also put the membership database onto the web and added programming to allow members to update their own information.  That is the private, members-only website, and it will not change.

Now it’s time to make our main, public, website interactive as well. 

This site is created using the WordPress platform.  This allows us to be much more flexible in how the content gets created.  WordPress allows us to build a website in a very modular fashion.  Every piece of the content can stand on its own .. one post, one page, one link.  The WordPress platform is what puts it altogether.  The entire system is web-based. 

At first, I will be the only one that actually uploads the content.  But, we will be looking for members who want to learn (and who the board authorizes), and I can teach them how to add/edit/delete pages and posts as well.  Eventually, this can be a group effort and you won’t even need me.  As a teacher, I’ve always seen it as success when my clients don’t need me anymore!

The Top Menu

Take a look the top menu.  It starts with ‘Home’, then ‘About WEC’, ‘Calendar’, and ‘Newsletters.’  If you just point and hover over ‘About WEC’ you will see two submenu items: Membership and Programs.  Also hovering over Newsletters will give you May 2009 and June 2009.  Everything you access by that main menu is in ‘Pages.’  Try clicking around and checking things out. 
8/1/9: this has changed somewhat already.  Please take  look a the current menu items and leave a comment to this page about what you think the menu items should be.

The Latest News Page

This is the blog part.  This center-content portion of the Home page consists of ‘Posts.’  WordPress is a blogging software and usually the main content is contained in dated posts.  This ‘message from your webmaster’ is a post – but I’ve made it private.  I also have included a few member profiles from past newsletters as ‘posts’ just for example purposes.

I’m not sure yet how this will shake out.  Eventually we may be able to do away with the formal monthly newsletter and just have ongoing ‘Latest News Posts.’  But I don’t want to start out that way.  Our newsletter is too valuable, and members have gotten so accustomed to submitting information for the monthly newsletter – I don’t want to mess with that!  What do you think?  Use the comments feature on this post to leave your opinion. 

I think members might also be interested in having a post of their own – they could have a personal post and a business post.  The beauty of posts is that they can be categorized and have multiple keywords (tags) attached to them – this makes our information very searchable.  They would probably submit these posts to me or some newly designated website editor.  You could charge a fee for the business profile.  Notice all the ‘tags’ already at the very bottom of the website.  Click on any one and you’ll see all the posts with that tag.

The Right Sidebar

There are so many things that can go into the sidebar.  What I’ve started with is links.  At the very top is Categories of posts, then links to other WEC pages – the Members-only site and the Photo Album.  Then, there are members’ businesses, then there are other links submitted by members.  The board should discuss what fee should be charged for these links, if any.  Keep looking down the sidebar and you see ‘Archives.’  This is an automatic organization of posts by the date they were published.  You will also see ‘Tags.’  These are the keywords that are attached to any given post.  Any post can have any number of Tags. Click on one tag, and you’ll see all the posts associated with it. 

Bottom

The footer of the page is similar to the right sidebar in that special things can go there.  Right now, ‘Recent Comments’ is at the left.  Tags are in the middle.  This is all the tags which have been applied to posts.  Click on the tag for ‘hairdresser’ for example, and you’ll be taken to whatever post was tagged with that word.  The ‘meta’ at the right is for me and whoever else starts editing the site – clicking on Admin takes you to the backoffice of WordPress, where we can write/edit/delete posts/pages or change options for the sidebar or footer etc.

Comments

Please try leaving a comment, even if you don’t know what to say, just to get the hang of it.  I think this could become a wonderful communication tool for the club.