Building on Success:
In about one month the Third Annual Carden Nature Festival will be underway. Carden Guide is proud to have been a supporter and service provider to the Festival from the beginning. It is already clear that Festival 09 will be another success. The Steering Committee under the guidance of Chair Lou Probst, the resources and amazing staff of the Couchiching Conservancy and a large cadre of volunteers have all pulled to gether to to make this annual event a significant communnity enterprise.
It is barely over 2 years ago that the decision was taken to create a nature festival in Carden. The first festival was put together in only a few short months with thirty-some activities, tentative steps and and just the initial sketches of what the festival aspired to be. Nevertheless, everyone involved was, at the end, truly amazed and gratified with the result; great attendance, outstanding weather and above all the great response and active participation of the local community. The most popular activity, by far, has been the Festival Community Dinner on Saturday night.
Festival Community:
By year two the Festival Community Dinner had completly out grown not only the Kirkfield Lions Hall but also filling the Presbyterian Church across the street. This year everything will take place in and around the grounds of the Carden Recreation Centre. More than 100 activities, including many excursions with expert volunteer leaders to nearby natural heritage hotspots . A large marquee tent will serve as the venue for the Community Dinners and if past experience is any indicator will also become a hub of Festival Community-at-large.
Through all of this the role of Carden Guide has also evolved. At first we served in the capacity of a traditional web developer, providing much free time and some paid services, delivering a website that would normally be well beyond the modest resources of a fledgling organization. Beginning this year the Festival website has become the prototype for our vision of being able to provide free webspace to small local community clubs and groups and also organizations with a grand vision.
Leading The Way:
One of the key factors in selecting the technology for our new website is the capability for remote authoring by people who have, fairly basic computer skills. Most of the content for the current Festival website has been created and directly posted to the site by Lou Probst. Lou will be the first to admit that he is in no way a computer expert, although he is a fairly competent user of Microsoft Word and Excel. After about two hours of training, a little coaching and a good measure of perseverance, Lou has been able to construct a great website that very nicely provides all of the necessary information for potential festival goers. Good web-authoring job Lou!
We are looking forward with much anticipation to see how next years festival will continue to evolve.
