by Kevin Miller

I have been the Chair of the Information & Communication Committee for the past 7 years. Committee members in 2004 were Anita Miller and Jaclyn Vallis.

Triathlon Manitoba uses e-mail, our website, the telephone, our Spring Newsletter, media releases, and paper leaflets to communicate information to our membership and others.

1. Maintain all current features (pages) on the website, and create new ones as opportunities and needs arise. Keep the website pages accurate and well organized. The website currently has 900+ pages.

Our 1043 page website is a repository of accurate, relevant, and up-to-date current and historical information. In spring 2004, most of the Athlete Profile pages were deleted; the only ones Anita maintained were for athletes who replied to her request for updates. All other "current information" pages were maintained, primarily by Anita; this requires a huge effort each spring to review the entire website and ensure the dozens of appropriate pages are updated or rewritten with relevant and correct info for the upcoming season. 

All of the rewritten and newly created Triathlon Manitoba policies were posted on a new Policies page. A Race Rules & Safety Tips page was created; it contains links to existing pages/documents and to a new Safety Tips document that was created by Patricia, our Summer Development Coordinator.

More progress was made on the "Triathlon Manitoba History" initiative. Under my direction, Patricia gathered more information by interviewing a few people and writing notes. (Readers of the Headline Photo Story have seen bits and pieces of history during the past two years.) It's now really just a matter of me finding 25+ hours to put everything together onto a set of website pages. 

2. Update the website with information immediately after it becomes available. This results in almost daily updates.

Anita and I do all of the updates, and the website continues to be rigorously maintained.  The information flow between Jaclyn, Anita, me, and some other Directors continues to be very good.  Some other Directors could provide Anita with more and better information.

Jaclyn, Anita, and the Board were not constrained by "regular business hours".  Phone messages and e-mail messages were checked and sent, and website updates are made, on a 24-7 basis.  

3. Use the Triathlon Manitoba E-mail Contact List (1300+ addresses) to communicate important, changing, and time-sensitive information. Use the list prudently so that recipients will not begin to view it as junk mail.

The Triathlon Manitoba E-mail Contact List now has over 1375 addresses, and I sent out 20 messages to those addresses on a well-thought-out schedule throughout the year. The thought, composition, and sending of each Contact List message takes me ~2 hours. 

4. Publish and distribute a spring newsletter prior to the race season.

Jaclyn and Anita again did a great job on the newsletter, and it was distributed in early-mid April.  (See my 2001 report for details about producing and distributing the Newsletter.) Our Spring 2004 Newsletter was an excellent publication.

5. Publish and distribute program, event, and announcement brochures and posters. This includes assisting Race Directors with their event leaflets.

Again in 2004, this was done very well by Jaclyn and Anita.

6. Produce regular (weekly) media releases during the race season, and when required outside the season.

Jaclyn and/or Patricia have written 23 media releases since this time last year.  Anita posts each one on our website, and they are never removed (they become part of our history). The Media Releases page was changed to Media Centre this year, and we added a Triathlon Information section to it that contains twelve links to seven existing pages/documents and five new ones. 

7. Ensure that Information Technology is used appropriately by Triathlon Manitoba, and that any issues which arise are analyzed and resolved.

This is an ongoing, ad-hoc task.

The major upgrade this year was replacing our MTS dial-up corporate internet account with a Shaw High-Speed account that we share with Swimming Manitoba, the sport we share office space with. Net results:

• Jaclyn got a significantly faster, more reliable, and easier-to-use internet connection in the office, and we also got a second e-mail address which was used by Patricia during the summer and will be used for other purposes in the future.
• The personal MTS/Sympatico e-mail addresses for Kevin, Anita, Gary, and Jaclyn became "orphans". Gary purchased an account and new e-mail address that is being partially paid-for by TriMB. Jaclyn moved her address to her parents' account. Kevin moved his and Anita's addresses to Brent's MTS DSL high-speed account which is partially paid-for by TriMB..  
• Our e-mail address had to change from an MTS/Sympatico domain to a Shaw domain. We would have liked to move to our own domain (so we'd never have to change e-mail addresses again), but that was not possible under the internet sharing arrangement with Swimming Manitoba. We successfully managed the e-mail address change by moving our old MTS address to Brent's account for 8 months, and forwarding incoming e-mail from it to our new Shaw address.

The cost to Triathlon Manitoba for this new internet service is very close to the cost of the internet service we had with MTS, and the entire process went very smoothly due to good research, communication, decisions, and teamwork by both Jaclyn (Swimming Manitoba and Shaw) and Kevin (MTS).

Our website hosting agreement with MTS is separate, so it was not affected by this change.

I believe that we completely met our goals in the past year.