DENISE WELLS Your National Coordinator Incumbent! Revised 7/2/2016 My name is Denise Wells, and I am your current National Coordinator. I grew up in Indianapolis, Marion County, Indiana, and am 64 years old. After spending most of my life in Indiana, I moved to Florida in 2001, living first in Boca Raton and then in Miami Beach. I have now returned to Indiana and will be living in Fort Wayne, Indiana, very close to the Allen County Public Library. I currently work from home as a real estate contract manager for realtors, managing all of the logistics, process and paperwork of the purchase and sale of predominantly residential properties. After working many years with attorneys in various areas of law, I found myself working with an attorney-owned title insurance company a few years ago, handling all of the title insurance processing needs for that company for 3 years. I have worked in almost every area of law in my 42 years of legal experience. Within this time period, I worked 10 1/2 years for Dion of Dion & The Belmonts fame, managing his music publishing company, Bronx Soul Music, copyrighting compositions and albums, handling the calculations of writers' pay, and a catalog of compositions owned by his company. Previously I also held a real estate license in two states. I have had the pleasure of being the National Coordinator now, during The USGenWeb Project 20th anniversary now and through June 2017. With several fellow volunteers, USGenWeb met many fabulous people at the recent NGS Conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I met many who did not know about our project and many others who were thrilled to know that we are still going strong. It was very gratifying to hear how many people have gone time and time again to our Project and found information and materials about their ancestors. I also met the Executive Director of the National Genealogical Society, the CEO of Billion Graves, numerous Ancestry people, Dick Eastman and last but not least Pat Richley-Erickson, fondly referred to as "Dear Myrtle." I am first and foremost a county coordinator and am very committed to protecting each and every volunteer's rights and their work. There is much to do to update this great Project. Shortly after being elected to the NC position, I received an email from a volunteer, informing me of the status of his state, and asking me for help. The leadership team had disappeared and were not responding to emails. After receiving control from of the state from Rootsweb, I began contacting each and every coordinator listed within that state to determine if they were still active and were committed to continuing their work for their county(ies). Unfortunately, many did not respond. I also enlisted the help of others to try to determine what had happened to their leadership. Investigation revealed that the ASC had passed away many months before, and eventually an obituary was located for that person. No matter how hard we tried, we could not determine what had truly happened to the SC. We looked everywhere for information on the SC to no avail. We then began putting counties up for adoption and providing that information to the general membership. Counties were adopted and the current coordinators were requested to update their sites and their copyrights. A logo contest was held, a new logo was chosen, and I brought in a temporary SC to manage the state, and finally an election was held so the state now has a very effective leadership team. That state was Minnesota and its resurrection began with an email from a concerned volunteer in that state. After that, two other states were taken over because of the failure of the leadership for different reasons. Both states received great makeovers for their state pages, and both states still need new county coordinators to replace those that went missing, as well as new leadership. We would love to have people who have a serious interest in Utah or South Carolina to adopt counties in those states. (I myself would love to adopt a county in South Carolina, but I haven't yet been able to determine in which county my great great grandmother was born!) Once we get enough volunteers for these states, elections can be held. I would like to see our current National Bylaws and Guidelines revised. I feel it is time to make some changes to keep up with the changing times, and I definitely want to look at better marketing and collaboration of The USGenWeb Project with other free genealogy groups/ventures. We can stay the same and just keep plodding along, or we can investigate other opportunities. I was approached by several other genealogy entities during the NGS Conference in Fort Lauderdale this past May, and I would love to explore what might be possible. You never know what could come from a collaboration. One of the things that is currently being updated is the election process, but it seems there is always something that needs attention in that regard, and we have numerous volunteers committed to getting that totally updated. So please, if you are having a problem, be sure to let me or the chair person of the Election Committee. They are working hard to prepare and need your help. If you have previously registered a different email address when you first registered and at any time changed to a new email address on your site, you need to let the Election Committee chairperson know. We want each and every one of you who wants to vote to be able to do so, but if your prior email address has bounced off the National mail list as not functioning, and/or you have changed an email address on your county site, you need to let the Election Committee know as soon as possible so they can confirm that you are registered properly. We are not trying to keep anyone from voting, but we need your help as well. Any questions, please let me, or Gayle Trillerknow. We will help you get this corrected. I believe in each and every one of us being responsible for what we said we wanted to do when we joined this project. I would love to see our State Coordinators take on making sure that each county in their state meets all of the requirements for being a project inside of USGenWeb. Cohesion is what the project needs, with still giving our volunteers the opportunity to be creative and decisive in how their sites look and where they are located. But what if you cannot afford to do that? Would you be interested in working with a project that would like to provide more opportunities if the right conditions exist? We should look at those possibilities. The requirements for each county and state are not that stringent, but lives get busy and other things often take over our lives, and there are times when a volunteer requires more assistance from their fellow coordinators and state coordinators in accomplishing their end goals. I truly believe that it is the leadership team for each state that needs to provide direction and assistance, when necessary. As always, I am here to listen to and help visitors and volunteers alike. We have made many strides forward, but there is more needed. I am proud to see that this year there are more people interested in how this project is doing and more are running for positions. I am also proud to see that many more volunteers came forward to serve on the Election Committee. I definitely would like to see our voting membership more active, and it appears that they will be this year and in the years to come. The USGenWeb Project is here to stay, but we need to look at how we can evolve and grow and change and still be wonderful, helpful and new. We need more volunteers and all of us need to look at how can we grow this project. I'm always open to listen to ideas, plans and opportunities. Numerous people in the greater genealogical community made a point of seeking me out at the conference when they knew that we were there. And I am definitely looking forward to our booth at next years NGS Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, from 10-13 May 2017, thanks to the generosity of one of our volunteers. Come see us there at the completion of our 20th anniversary year. I hope you will allow me to continue as your National Coordinator for another term. My constant commitment is to polish and shine this great project so it stays relevant and grows. I hope you will join me in doing that. All my best to each and every one of you. Denise |
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