Being invisible

Our Website began misbehaving on May 15th during our AGM. It seemed that some weird Drupal form thing was happening. We were already in the process of having our Website redeveloped but we intended to keep the old site operational throughout the redevelopment process.

After some initial trouble shooting forays into whether we could keep the site up, we had to make a decision – do we spend development time (and precious but limited money) to keep the site live or do we invest in the new Website? These are choices that everyone has to make when it comes to using of their financial resources. With great regret, we decided to put all of our energy into the redevelopment project. We put up a basic page to let people know we hadn’t disappeared but not having a functional Website meant in reality, that we seemed to have vanished.

In this era of web based everything, having only a minimal web presence for three and one-half months has taught us just how critical the web has become to any organization that wants to get its message out. I have been blogging throughout the summer. It’s odd feeling like you are talking to yourself. But, I knew that I needed to continue to comment on the events of importance so that when the site went live, people would know we had been busy. And there were lots of events to comment on – from the BP spill and the subsequent Enbridge pipeline spill in Michigan to the successful HST petition and the subsequent drama over the court challenges.

Although we had important observations to make, we held off sending out press releases because we didn’t have the Website to back up what we were saying. And at one point when we did feel the need to get out a press release, my phone crapped out so not only could people not find us in any substantive way on the web, they couldn’t get hold of me by phone!

On the up side, we are very happy with the new Website which we launched quietly today and will announce to the world and our members tomorrow. Three of us, Murray Gudmundson, our secretary, Rebecca Helps, our executive director and I were the core team planning the new site. Fortunately, we had lots of differences of opinion because by resolving those, we are all happy with the final product. We also had an amazing volunteer, Dale Lovell, who did an amazing job as our chief editor. His work improved everything about the site.

The party has taken important steps to ensure that we never have this happen again. (It’s not the first time that we have had Website problems – our Website was redirected to a UFO site for 6 days during December last year – but that is another story!) We now have a proper IT plan and our Website and data is securely managed by a reputable firm.

In any event, we’re back and I’m glad. I hope you enjoy your time exploring the Website and I trust you’ll want to contribute. Non members are welcome to contribute policy ideas or to inform others about hot regional issues. And, there are lots of jobs that need doing so I invite our members to check out the volunteer section to get information about those. If you don’t find something you like but you want to help, let us know what you would like to do. More than anything, we need members and donors who are willing to help us move forward toward electing Green MLAs in 2013.