Chairman’s Award
Presented by Barry Clasper
Now I have the happy task of presenting a Chairman’s Award. Normally, this award is presented by the sitting Chairman, but this particular instance is a little different. The contribution we’re recognizing with this award took place over a lengthy period, spanning the tenures of several Chairmen. Therefore, I’ve asked all the Past Chairmen who are present here tonight to come forward and help me present this award: Tim Crawford; Jon Jones; Jerry Junck; Ernie Kinney; Jim Mayo; Tim Marriner; John Marshall; and Mike Seastrom.
When CALLERLAB was founded, there was no e-mail or internet. Those who wish to nitpick minor details will probably say they did exist at that time, which is true, but they were restricted to a very few privileged and technically savvy users. The World Wide Web was still almost 20 years away. As the world changed, CALLERLAB changed too – perhaps more slowly than some thought we should (although more quickly than others wanted). As e-mail and websites became ubiquitous, CALLERLAB joined in. Today, most CALLERLAB committee business, BOG business, and EC business is transacted via e-mail. Our website grows more important to our operations every year, hosting documents, Convention information, and general information about CALLERLAB.
We are now making plans to expand the role of our website even faster. We’re planning things such as online voting, online membership renewals, online merchandise purchases, and online committee discussions. Just as the scale of our operation makes it necessary to have a full-time Home Office staff, the anticipated scale of our website in the near future makes it necessary to engage outside paid resources to handle the workload.
For the past ?? years, Patty Greene has served as our webmaster. She has hosted our site, installed software, and handled problems. It has been a huge job, and she has served generously and unstintingly even though our demands are often totally unreasonable. Any of you who have worked in IT support jobs know that users are often a pain in the “patootie”, and we certainly have not been an exception. Patty always responded – calmly, cheerfully, competently, and with a big smile, no matter how convoluted our request might be.
She has done all this as an unpaid volunteer in her spare time, merely because she wanted to make a contribution. Despite this informal situation, and the fact that not only was she not being paid, but she was given no budget to purchase software or equipment, Patty approached the task with great professionalism. The company we have engaged to take on the heavy development work for the new enhancements has remarked on how well positioned we are technically to take these new steps.
I take great pleasure in presenting the Chairman’s Award to Patty Greene