As you might know, I used to be the web page designer for the Sebasticook Chapter.  The site was initially set up with a two year term and a maximum of ten pages.  I probably put over 40 hours into it all together.  At $75 an hour, which is what I get paid for doing this stuff, I donated $3000 worth of my time to the chapter.

When folks pay, they don’t want many changes, and any changes they want, they do as much work themselves as possible to make time “cut and paste.”  When folks aren’t paying they expect a mess of changes.  They want them NOW, and if it’s complicated and takes a lot of time, well, that’s my problem.

So after the new administration took over the club and started changing clinics at the last minute and failing to get newsletters out in a timely fashion, they started blaming ME for not getting the word out. 

Never mind that I was working in Massachusetts half the time with no access to my personal email and commuting 110 miles each way.  My own site was suffering and I had puppies to sell.

And never mind that a web site does not “get the word out” because folks have to actively look for a change on it.  It's like leaving a message on YOUR OWN answering machine and assuming someone will call in to get it.

And never mind that nobody ever gave me information that I could cut and paste into the site.

So I set each officer up with a screen name (actual name) and password (Sebasticook1) so they could log into a blog and type in any chapter news they wanted.  As an added benefit of the blog, members could subscribe to it to be notified of any changes by email.  Each officer got an email detailing how to do it, and let me tell you the interface is so simple that if you can get on the internet, you can blog.  A blog is just a web page where folks can add articles and pictures and stuff easily, put a “category” on each entry so they can be sorted, and the newest stuff appears at the top.  You are reading a blog.

Of course, once they could do it themselves nobody ever did make much of an effort to use the system. 

They even had the gall to publish in one of the few newsletters that came out last year that the system didn’t work!  When I called to find out what the matter was, the problem was lost passwords and forgotten screen names. 

I was told that no information was better than old information and I decided it was better for me to not be involved any more.

The Wades (thought the chapter elected Malcolm...) asked me to hand over the password so someone else could do the site.  I explained it wasn’t that easy.  I “owned” the web site and it was “housed” in my account.  Turning over the passwords required handing over all of my sites to -- who?  I asked them to provide me with someone who would take it off my hands, transferred to their account.

Months passed with no word.  The site was set to expire in early November, so I posted notice that the site was going away, and finally, they gave me the name of the guy.

I paid for another year, and then transferred ownership of Sebasticook.com to him.  (Which reminds me, the chapter STILL OWES ME MONEY.)

After almost a month and the site is still a “parking” site – ads that someone else is probably making money from.  In other words, there isn’t even the most basic coming soon, or single page welcome page.  The chapter has it’s wish, no information instead of outdated info.

So am I upset? Yes.  I put a lot of work into that site, optimized it so search engines would find it when folks were searching for stuff other than NAVHDA in hopes it would draw new members.  I dug out the old newsletters and scanned them for history’s sake, and the new administration didn’t even have the decency to email me the newsletters so I could put them up.  And now it’s all gone.  They criticized me for failing to keep the site up to date, while failing to keep me in the loop about changes.

The chapter has strayed far from its original goals.  In less than 10 years only two folks who braved a January storm to establish the chapter remain active.  The new folks spent the money we raised for land to buy stuff that won’t last.  Heck, I’m disappointed I showed up to one clinic last year and there weren’t any birds save two ratty dead ones we were supposed to drag around, and at another was told that the birds in the chapter trailer belonged to other members who’d put in an order with the club and the club had run out of birds.

The folks running Sebasticook chapter now don’t remember what it was like when we were poor, or how we went from $1000 in debt to $1000 in the black in the first year.