Dwight Watt Georgia Kiwanian Article

September 2009

New directions for technology

It has been my pleasure to serve the Georgia Kiwanis as Technology chair for the past 6 and a half years During this time I have remade the web site several times with input from numerous people on what worked and what did not. I have added new features to it including the map of the club meeting locations, I have received the most feed back on it and all has been positive. To do that I also now have the club information stored in a MySQL database that will open more doors to using this information and makes updating easier by stored being in one location for all places you can view on the website.

We have added a competition for the club and division web sites and refined the rules. Judges have been webmasters from other districts and graphics people at KI. I have in turn had the pleasure of judging other districts websites.

In the last few months I have added to the district's technology a Facebook page, a Twitter account and a Ning account. Directions are on the Georgia Kiwanis website (www.gakiwanis.org) on becoming a friend of the Georgia Kiwanis on Facebook (we already have over 100 friends) and Ning an dhow to follow the Georgia Kiwanis on Twitter. I have assisted some of you with establishing or updating club sites and will be glad to continue to do so. I have had the opportunity to present training at many of our conferences on digital photography, web page development and related subjects and hope to offer more in the future.

Hopefully these articles I have rewritten on technology, both what Georgia Kiwanis are using and what you can use as an individual and as a club, have been helpful and you have learned more about the rapidly evolving technology world we live in. Most stuff I wrote about was new to me just months before also, although I have developed web sites sine 1995. In turn that article has now developed into a technology article I do weekly for three newspapers in Georgia, I appreciate the feedback I received from many of you on what I wrote, that has encouraged me to go further.

In case you had not figured it out I am a teacher (CIS at technical college) and I enjoy it whether classroom., training Kiwianians or articles teaching about technology.

The web site will continue to improve (there is no perfect website, the standards and what we can do is continually evolving) and hopefully we can find new and different ways to use technology to improve our lives as Kiwanians and make the tedious items easier and everything more educational and enjoyable.

The judges in the competition for the website this years were the former webmaster of the Kentucky-Tennessee District, the webmasters for the New York and Eastern-Illinois-Iowa districts and a graphics person at KI. I appreciate each of them giving their time to the Georgia district.

The winners in this year's web site competition were:
1. Marietta
2. Peachtree City
3. Atlanta

Honorable Mention (alphabetical order)
Classic City
Cumming
East Cobb
Hartwell
Historic Roswell
Sandy Springs
Swainsboro

Dwight

Copyright 2009 by Dwight Watt