The main presentation was given by Paul Willies of Long Bay Communications, http://www.longbaycommunications.com/.

Paul’s business is designing, building and maintaining web sites. But that is not exactly what he spoke about. Rather he described a new product he and a programmer have been developing that allows far-flung organizations with numerous member groups to maintain their membership records, their meeting schedules, etc. on the web where they can be immediately accessed, modified and updated.

This is done in a secure environment, so that payment of dues or membership information is safe. Every action requires a certain level of access. Any member of a local group would have access to update their personal information, but only designated local officers would be allowed to change other information concerning the local group. Information of a national (or international) scope could only be changed by individuals with the appropriate higher level of access.

Paul said that the project was done totally outside of the Microsoft software orbit. The site is hosted on servers running either Linux or Unix software, the web programming language is PHP, and the database that is behind everything is MYSQL.

Additionally, he showed how, by using templates, each local organization could bring their current membership database into the new setup as a onetime uploading of their data.