Trip to York - Guild Website Training

At the weekend, I went to York for a Quilters Giuld training day. The Guild has commissioned a new website, and the purpose of the day was to walk us through the new website, and then transfer as much information from the old website to the new website. Numerous glitches meant that the new website is unlikely to go live for some weeks....but the intention is to make it as lively and attractive as possible......

Each region and specialist group sent a delegate - I was there with Aidan Nichols, who runs our BQSG website. I think that most people managed to do quite a bit during the short time that we were there. Of course once the new site goes live, the content of the old site will be lost, hence there is some urgency about the transfer. Here is my early morning view of the minster while I walked to our meeting point....

Although many of the others stayed at the Bar Convent, I stayed at my favorite guest house, the Abbeyfields, which is not far from the train station on a quiet road.

The venue for the day was the local FE college, York College, in one of their IT classrooms.

Our morning session was rudely interupted by the fire alarm; we duly exited the building. A fire engine attended, only to find that there had been a fault with the fire alarm system...

Fortunately, BQSG has its own website, so the transfer of data is not such a pressing issue for us, although of course we want our section to appear as attractive and informative as possible. In reality, each of the regions and special groups will have their own website, which will join seamlessly with the rest of the site. There is also a new area, the Members area, where all paid up Guild members will have their own page, to add information, advertise teaching and upload photos. This will replace the existing teachers list.

At the end of the day, there was a taxi to take us back to the train station...as my train was not due for another two hours, I went across to the nearby National Train Museum (free entry)

The blue locomotive here is Mallard.....

and here is a 1930's model of Stephenson's Rocket, the earliest engine....although this is a dissected model, so that you can see how it worked by looking into its innards.....my friend Colin French from Cornwall was very involved with the recreated Trevithicks Steam Engine, so I found this early machine interesting....