Greetings from your new Webmaster!

Greetings all Sidecarists!

I am the official new Webmaster, Jerry Matson, taking over for Al Olme, after his decades of work and dedication to the organization.

I met many of you at the annual sidecar rally in Hotchkiss several weeks ago and really enjoyed the camaraderie and culture displayed there by everyone. Many thanks for the warm welcome!

There are many more people on these forums than came to the rally so a little background is probably warranted. I was recruited by the current USCA president, Jan Daub, after many discussions over several years. I finally agreed to help and came to the rally to meet everyone and especially the board of directors. The BOD voted to approve me in the role so I am now official. But there was another important next step...

After I returned home I had a 2 hour Zoom meeting with Al Olme. For those not familiar with him, now and future readers, Al was the webmaster for many many, years, and was a former president of the USCA. We covered many topics and he answered all of my questions. Toward the end of our call (Zoom) he said I owned it now and could make any changes. That is a huge vote of confidence from any administrator who has managed a complex technical project for as long as he has. I will walk slowly as I learn about the details and the people involved. I have taught in many of my technology classes over the years the importance of the philosophy of "Crawl, then walk, then run."

While I am new to the sidecar family I am not new to technology and contributing (and leading) many social organizations. My role here now is to keep the lights on and make incremental improvements over time to the underlying website technology. As I (virtually) meet more and more people I will try to expand my role to helping people learn and use the tools we have and maybe new ones as well.

My initial goals are to improve the foundations of the website with an automated backup process, a mirror development/testing site, adding monitoring services, security hardening against spammers and hackers, and analytics to measure performance and engagement. All background stuff transparent to users - but extremely important for the health and safety of the website. Some of this I have already done.

I stand on the shoulders of those who came before me. Al managed this project for many years and got it to where it is today. While I know he is glad to hand it off he is not completely disappearing, and he has invited me to call/email him anytime - a privilege I will use judiciously.

And I know there are many others here who are also old-timers who know the history of the website and association. I look forward to working with you all and everyone here in the 3 wheel community!!

Jerry
"I ride because it frees my mind from the tyranny of petty things" Adopted from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry