You will be receiving this newsletter around December 1, 2010, and all club webmasters still have plenty of time to enter their club’s Web site into the contest! The due date for your federation is listed in the chart below. Please encourage your club’s webmaster to enter the contest if he or she hasn’t already done so. Your club’s Web site will be better for having gone through the process of being judged.

So how does a club Web site enter the contest? The webmaster needs to download a copy of the following three documents: 2011 Entry Form, the 2011 Score Sheet, and the 2011 Score Sheet Guidelines. These forms are all PDF files, and they can be filled out on your computer and saved to your hard drive. Fill out the one-page Entry Form completely, and fill out the top part of the Score Sheet on both pages. When finished, e mail both forms to your regional federation Contest Committee Chair no later than that federation’s due date.

The Score Sheet Guidelines document goes through every item on the score sheet and explains what it is and why it’s important to your Web site. EVERY club webmaster (and every contest judge!) should read the Guidelines document closely. These guidelines can help all webmasters tune up their Web site.

These contest files are available on the AFMS Web site
http://www.amfed.org/web/website_contest.htm. Make sure you’re downloading the 2011 version of these files. Also make sure that you have installed a free copy of Adobe Reader 9 so you can change some of your filled-in answers later if necessary. Adobe Reader 9 is available at http://www.adobe.com/products/reader/.

Members of the Web Site Contest Committee and the due dates for entries to their regional federation contests are as follows:

Regional Federation Contest Chair E-mail Address Entry Due Date California Federation (CFMS) Merryan O’Neill mvoneill@comcast.net 01/17/2011 Eastern Federation (EFMLS) Dan Imel lapidry@aol.com 02/01/2011 Midwest Federation (MWFMGS) Cindy Root d-root@sbcglobal.net 01/15/2011 Northwest Federation (NFMS) Cheri George lizardwoman3@yahoo.com 01/31/2011 Rocky Mountain Federation (RMFMS) Phyllis George pgeorge4@comcast.net 01/15/2011 South Central Federation (SCFMS) Don Shurtz don.shurtz@gmail.com 01/15/2011 before 6 p.m. Southeast Federation (SFMS) Jim Flora jimflora@windstream.net 01/15/2011

The regional federation judges will give each entrant valuable insight into how to improve his or her club Web site, and they will also tell them what they’re doing right. This year all entrants will receive a certificate, and the first place regional federation winners also will receive a plaque awarded by their federation. Federation first and second places will also receive animated gifs signifying the excellence of their sites for placement on their Web site’s home page.

The first place entries will be forwarded to the AFMS level and judged as a finalist. Wes Lingerfelt, our AFMS-level judge for 2011, will give the regional first place winners the benefit of his wisdom, his extensive Web experience, and his knowledge of what works on a Web site and what doesn’t. He will analyze each of the sites forwarded to him, and he will give useful feedback on what is being done well and how each site can be improved.

All the contestants participating at the AFMS level will receive a certificate signifying their rank, and the first place winner will also receive an AFMS first place plaque. The top three will also receive animated .gifs for placement on their sites as a symbol of their sites’ excellence.

The results of the various regional Web Site Contests will be announced at the annual meetings of the regional federations during their Breakfast with the Editors and Webmasters. The results of the AFMS and EFMLS Web Site Contests will be announced at the AFMS/EFMLS/GMSS joint Show & Convention (July 7–10, 2011) in Syracuse, NY during the Breakfast with the Editors and Webmasters. Hope to see you all there!

This is the third year for the AFMS Web Site Contest. I hope that word about the contest is growing and that we’ll have even more entries in the 2011 contest. The primary value of this contest lies in the comments that each judge writes as he or she goes through the Web site looking for the items listed on the Score Sheet. The judges are instructed to identify what the site does well as well as to comment on what can be done better. The goal of the contest is to help the Web sites better serve their clubs.

All the Web Site Contest Committee Members (one for each regional federation) are busy working on their third year of running the Web Site Contest for their regional federation. So far, the position of Contest Committee Chair for the Rocky Mountain Federation Web Site Contest is still open, so I will serve in that capacity for the duration until someone volunteers to take it over. (Committee Chairs do not need to be from the regional federation that they chair since the contest is handled entirely by e mail. If you would like to volunteer as the RMFMS Committee Chair, please contact me at pgeorge4comcast.net )

The Committee Members set the due dates for their contest and receive the entries. They forward the entries to the two judges assigned to that region, they receive from the judges the completed score sheets, and they rank the results and award the first-place plaque and the certificates (places one through ten and honorable mention) at the Breakfast with the Editors and Webmasters during their regional federation’s annual show. The first-place entry from each federation is then forwarded to Wes Lingerfelt (the AFMS-level judge). Currently the Committee Members are notifying webmasters, editors, and club presidents in their region and their regional newsletter editor about the details of the contest, the due date for entries, and the rest of the schedule for their regional contest.

Contact your regional federation Committee Member (listed below) by e-mail for information about the contest and the deadlines. The deadlines all vary by region and are determined by when their annual show is scheduled.

Webmasters wishing to enter their Web sites into the contest should download the 2011 AFMS Web Site Contest Entry Form, the 2011 AFMS Web Site Contest Score Sheet, and the 2011 AFMS Web Site Contest Score Sheet Guidelines from the AFMS Web site (or from their regional federation’s Web site). (The 2011 versions of these forms MUST be used—NOT the forms from 2009 or 2010.) These forms are in PDF format, and they can be opened with Adobe Acrobat Reader®. Free Adobe Reader software is available at www.adobe.com/products/reader/. The contest information on the AFMS Web site can be found at www.amfed.org/web/website_contest.htm or at http://www.amfed.org/downloads.htm. Download the three 2011 Web Site Contest documents and read the 2011 AFMS Web Site Contest Score Sheet Guidelines very carefully. It thoroughly explains what makes a good Web site and what the judges will be looking for.

Members of the Webmasters Contest Committee are as follows:

To enter the contest, the webmaster needs to fill out the 2011 Entry Form completely and fill out the information requested in the top part of the 2011 Score sheet. These forms can be filled-in on your computer and saved to your hard drive. Important: You need Adobe Reader version 8 or 9 (or Acrobat v. 8 or 9) to be able to save the filled-in forms to your hard drive and to modify them later if necessary. Send the two completed forms as e mail attachments to your regional Web Site Contest Committee Member before the due date in your region.

Two judges will be assigned to each regional competition (their scores for each contestant will be averaged) and one judge (Wes Lingerfelt) is assigned for the AFMS level. Each judge probably will be judging two different regions, but no judge will judge his or her own region. Right now I have a total of eight regional judges. If I can get another six judges, each judge will judge only one regional federation.

If you are a current (or former) webmaster or are very Web-site savvy, please help make the contest a success by volunteering a little of your time to act as a judge. Read the 2011 Score Sheet Guidelines to see what the judges will be looking for on the sites that they judge, and if you would like to be an important part of this contest, please contact me at pgeorge4comcast.net. Help this contest be an even bigger success in its third year.

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