On this lovely Tuesday I am immersed in the overhaul of the MENC Web site. We are literally moving, page by page, the old Web site into a new one. Each page has to be stripped of codes and links, entered into a new template, formatted, and then have any links added back in. This is tedious but not particularly difficult. The hard part (for me at least) is keeping straight where the pages need to be placed, and to what and from what other pages they need to be linked. This gets complicated when not all the other pages have been moved yet. The other complicaton is that there are "bugs" that pop up -- images that don't show, bullets that disappear, pages that can't be saved. We're working all this out as we go.
We're racing against the clock to get this site ready for launch the week of the National Conference. I'm very excited to show our members this new, improved music education resource.
Watched the annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony last night (while I was moving pages via my laptop). Parts of it were pretty strange. Instead of performing after she was inducted (and had given an endless acceptance speech), Madonna sat in the audience while Iggy Pop sang two of her hits. It was really weird. Iggy looked in pretty good shape, but he did Madonna's songs in his own punk-rock style which doesn't have much to do with her music. They are both from Detroit -- that's the only connection I could make. There has been some debate online as to whether Madonna should really be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, so maybe she wanted to make the case that her music could be performed in a rock and roll style. Tom Hanks gave a somewhat over the top but ultimately moving induction speech for the Dave Clark Five. John Mellencamp and his inductor, Billy Joel, also went on and on and on. But all in all, pretty good background noise for moving Web pages.
Hope you're participating in the World's Largest Concert this Thursday! The MENC staff will join the singing at our monthly staff meeting.
Onward .... EWL
