A MESSAGE FROM THE ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF TECHNOLOGY

Hello!

By now, I hope you have visited our brand new website! If you are a current member, you should have received your welcome email. If you are a current member and have not received your welcome email, first check your spam folder. If it is not there, or if you had it but lost it in your jungle-of-an-inbox, you can rerequest the welcome email using your NAfME ID and email address on our public help page. It is important that you sign up for your new account as communications from your district/region leaders will not “go through” after July before you have logged in and set your OMEA zip code! District/Region leaders take note and emphasize this point with your members while we are still communicating through the old system!

The launch of the new website was not without bumps, but those bumps were met with exercises in great patience and grace from our membership and characteristically heroic efforts from our OMEA staff! “We are OMEA,” and the launch of this site is a testament to that collaboration optimism. In particular, I would like to recognize Greg for treating this launch (and these past few months) more like mile 26 of a marathon than the final months before retirement.

Looking ahead, you will notice continual improvements to the system! The top priorities for the next three months are as follows:

• Refine the Marching Band registration process that empowers event chairs to perform needed actions and enforce copyright compliance.

• Build a system to manage adjudicator certifications, assignments, availability, and affiliations.

• Build a mechanism for accepting registrations for Marching Band State Finals and scheduling those events that can scale to the level required.

• Activate a system through which our business partners can continue to gift to OMEA and return incremental value through our tradeshow and advertisements.

As you may have noticed, much of what we are building is being completed “just in time.” This is not ideal, but it is as practical as we can manage while trying to produce a minimal viable product. We ask that you continue to be patient with our rollout schedule. The old system was not built in a single year, and neither will this new system. You can expect continual improvement of our systems year over year!

Nicholas Turon Assistant Director of Technology