Does your organization need help with a project? I am Eileen Cushing-Craig, and as part of my position at Kronos Inc. I coordinate the community service efforts of a group of volunteers, in and around Chelmsford.
We are available to help out your organization in a variety of ways. In the past, we have sent volunteers to help out at the Lowell Food Bank and the Table of Plenty. We've done household work and yard work through the Chelmsford Military Covenant, and through the German Home in Lawrence. We are committed to making our community a better place.
If your organization could use a few hours worth of volunteer help, please reach out to me and explain your need, and hopefully my team can assist you. I can be reached at Eileen.CushingCraig@Kronos.com.
Eileen Cushing-Craig
8:57 am on Friday, October 5, 2012
Thanks for bumping up the announcement, Andrew! We appreciate it!
Andrew Sylvia
9:16 am on Friday, October 5, 2012
No problem! It's our policy to promote first and foremost the things here in the announcements section as well as things in the events section, the blogs section and our pics and clips gallery.
I actually got an e-mail from a man in town earlier this week that thought he was too important to submit things from his initiative into the announcements section and in turn said he would boycott us.
I told him this was fine, he's not going to get any special treatment -- folks that decide to take advantage of the fact the Patch system itself is a tool to help promote things in town will almost always be given preference.
Eileen Cushing-Craig
9:23 am on Friday, October 5, 2012
That's too bad. I was a bit concerned myself about the lack of visibility of the announcements. After I posted the announcement, I went back to try to find it because I wanted to make a change, and it took me a while to find it. Maybe a corner could be set aside on the front page for announcements? Just a thought, but again, thank you for helping the Kronos volunteers get the word out...we're here to help make the community a better place.
Andrew Sylvia
9:40 am on Friday, October 5, 2012
That's a great idea. I have no power over anything other than content, so I'll pass along the design idea, but in terms of other stuff, one thing I am going to try to do moving forward is putting announcements and blog posts onto the front page more often. We did that with Kate's Halloween events yesterday afternoon as well as Carmen's update on his talk with South Chelmsford's state reps.
Eileen Cushing-Craig
10:13 am on Friday, October 5, 2012
Sounds like a great idea! It's one way to allow your readers to stay connected to what's happening in town. (beside the political races, that is) :-)
Jim Stratton
6:22 pm on Friday, October 5, 2012
It would help if there were a way a user could mark things (stories with many comments, stories from "out of town") as "never show this to me." Then the local, more-relevant items would be more visible.
Andrew Sylvia
11:02 am on Saturday, October 6, 2012
Jim, you should check out some of the new Patches down on Long Island like Levittown (http://levittown-ny.patch.com/), Patch is experimenting with making it a customizable experience. I'll keep you all in the loop on what I hear about that.