The Illinois Park & Recreation Association has added blog technology to two of its sections’ Web sites: the Administration & Finance Section and the Communications & Marketing Section.

Converting the static pages to a more interactive page allows for the members of each section to have access to the latest resources and information - with members having the ability to comment on posts.  This commenting will lead to more feedback for the sections and assist in members learning what they want to know.  Members can register to become contributors to the sites and have full access to publish questions, meeting reminders, thoughts on a particular subject and more!  Everything is archived under categories so that members can easily access information long after being posted.

So how is this different from the ListServ emails?  There are a lot of agencies who have decided to tighten their restrictions on incoming mail due to the threat of SPAM emails.  Therefore, many of your emails are not even reaching the entire section’s membership.  Also, no one like to get all those bounce-back emails and “out-of-office” notices.

The section blogs are available to all (for now…) and there is no concern about breaking through SPAM filters.  The archiving abilities are also another nice feature for users.  I’ve been telling people that it’s basically like the ListServs on steroids!

More section blogs will be taking the place of the old section pages.  Let us know what you think.