Prior Page

Next Page

Page 10      Diablo Blue      July, 2001

(Continued from page 7)

New Users' SIG which will continue to meet before the general meeting, this new SIG will cover much the same material but hopefully with more time available and the opportunity for some hands-on experience. The meetings will be held at the Concord Police Department Community Room on the Saturday following the regular DVPC meeting at 1:00 to 3:00 p.m.
Meeting Procedure:  Someone mentioned we ought to be using Robert's Rules of Order, but since Robert hasn't been to a Board meeting in years and we lost our copy of his rules, we dropped that idea.
There not being anything else important to discuss, we ended the meeting at about 8:30, a little early. But then we all stood around talking for nearly another hour. By the time we left it was after 9:30 and we had nearly set the record for the longest Board of Directors meeting ever.

Last month's winner was Michael Stein with 49 words. Michael, you and Vera (the winner from May) can stop by the back table and pick up your prizes at the August meeting. With no meeting in July, we will have to wait until the August meeting for the next game. See Peggy, Stan (or whoever is at the table when you enter) and get your puzzle. Be sure you turn it in before the first speaker (yes, those who come early get more time to work on it) and one member will get a prize. Good luck!

(Continued from page 9)

away. There is no silver bullet but there are some software packages available to help you at least come close.
If you are interested in making information available to current customers and known prospects, then you already have your audience and this can be an excellent way to keep them informed of your products, updates, and news so what you need to do is to come up with a list of what you need to keep them informed about. This is the kind of site that many small businesses put together. The last type of web site would be just a general information site for prospects and casual browsers. Here you want to provide information to the general public and if you do catch a prospect, great.
The third issue is then how active your web site will be. I tend to lump them all into four major categories. A dead web site is one that has been forgotten by the owners. An static web site is one that is updated once a year, an inactive web site is one that changes maybe once a quarter, and an active web site changes at a minimum weekly. So, if you are interested in having people return to your site on a regular basis, then you need to consider the content and the kinds of information that will change on a regular basis to keep them coming back. Nothing kills return visitors more than coming back to a web site a couple of times and finding nothing new there. They stop coming back. Unfortunately, this means having the means, money, and effort to come up with something new for those return visitors. Options for information that change on a regular basis can include third party news organizations headlines that appear on your web site, an online newsletter that is updated daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly, new Information articles and reports that change, and finally, reviews and updates from the industry or government that you can reprint. If you also add a "Links Page" to point

(Continued on page 11)