HGS Newsletter - September, 2003

A Message to Members of the Houston Geological Society from Craig Dingler, HGS President
The Houston Geological Society website is New and Improved! The new HGS website is at the same Internet address, but we have made many, many changes, with more to come. Simply go to http://hgs.org to experience the new website.
As a current member, you are pre-registered on the site. To log-in, with full member privileges go to the link below and enter in your email address:
http://hgs.org/en/users/forgotpassword.asp
The link will take you to a screen that asks for your username or email address. Enter the email address that we have on file for you and click "Send My Password." That should show you a confirmation screen that your initial user name and password have just been sent to you by email, as you requested. The email address in our records is the address where you received this email. Be sure you use the same email address we have in our records.
Members who did not receive this email don''t have their correct email address on file with us. In that case, they can call or email the office with their correct email address. Joan Henshaw and Lilly Hargrave can be reached at 713-463-9476 or by email at joan@hgs.org or lilly@hgs.org. They can make the change online quickly and the member can try again at his or her convenience.
If you want to change your email address in our records, you can do so after you log in by clicking on "Edit Record" near the top left corner of the screen you are looking at. It should be the screen at http://www.hgs.org/en/users/view.asp. You can get to your personal record any time you are logged-in by clicking "My Information" on the navigation bar.
So what''s new about the website?
As you will see, it has a dramatically new layout and many new interactive features. Members are able to change their own addresses, phone numbers, and other personal data, and post jobs or resumes on line. Committees will be able to update their own page and post meeting times, meeting minutes, even pictures of their members and activities, if they like. Soon we will offer you the opportunity to pay your dues and register for our monthly meetings and short courses, paying by credit card on-line if you choose to do so. The website will keep a personal record for you of all the events you have registered for, past and future. If you use Outlook for your calendar, you can tell the website to post an event to your calendar, on your PC!
This newsletter is one more example of the new features available. There are many, many more features that we will bring to your attention as we implement them, so check the website often. Explore, try new things, and let us know what you think about the site.
For questions about the website or help using it, fill out the "Contact Us" form on the left side of the website''s home page and our new webmaster, Dave Crane, will respond as soon as possible. You can also contact Dave at dave@hgs.org.
There will be a section on the website where Newsletters and updates like this one are stored in case you prefer not to receive them by email. Oh, yes, that''s yet another feature of the website; you can "opt out" of receiving emails and we will not send them to you in the future. But we promise to continue trying to reduce the number of emails we send to members because we now have this Newsletter as a way to consolidate everything in one place for easy reference.
I''m personally very excited about what we will be able to do for our members with this new software. These changes were initiated by my predecessor, Denise Stone and the other officers of the HGS last year. I commend them for their foresight and really appreciate all the hard work that the WebTeam has put into this project this year. But the WebTeam is not resting. Much more needs to be done. You will see them rebuild more of the information we had on the old site and implement many new features over the next few months.
Craig DinglerHGS President 2003-2004(281) 930-2394 cdingler@sprintmail.com