At 7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 10, 2019, the Reston USE Board of Directors met at the home of Janet Cochran.

Along with Janet, those present included: Jim Seret, Norbert Pink, Cheri Wubbels, Susan Kousek, Kathy Bush and Alan Krishnan.

For our first order of business, our new pro bono web advisor, Gary Vaughan, presented the new and improved USE website to the board, demonstrating how we can work with it and take advantage of its many features and its potential to better connect our members with one another and with the local community.

Listening in and participating via speaker phone was our new part-time volunteer, Mark Drasbek, a college student from Great Falls who is sharing his IT skills with us. (Mark may be from Great Falls, but he is presently in school in Hawaii, so he was joining us from several time zones away!)

Kathy and Janet have been working along with Gary (and now Mark and Susan Kousek) in the effort to build our new website. Now, after this meeting, more USE board members will be able to add information and commentary to the site as we build our USE communications network, with potential for additional USE members to add to the site.

The presentation and discussion took up most of the meeting’s allotted time and was well worth it. Jim Seret provided photos from the meeting.

**PLEASE SEE THE NOTE BELOW FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ABOUT OUR WEBSITE’S DEVELOPMENT. YOU AS MEMBERS PLAY AN IMPORTANT PART.**

Next, Janet Cochran presented the results of the survey we distributed at the March Annual Meeting, wherein we asked those present to provide input to help us determine what could be the most effective methods of communications within USE. Further analysis is ongoing at this point.

Details were discussed about the upcoming Reston Yard Sale on Saturday, April 27th. Norbert Pink, Susan Kousek and David Bush will be organizing the event and contacting those who wish to participate with further details. We discussed creating a USE banner for display at the Yard Sale, at the Farmers Market, and at other locations where USE might have a presence. Kathy and Jim will follow up on this.

We began discussion about our presence at the Reston Farmers Market for the summer. Definite plans are still being worked out.

Our meeting closed at 9 p.m., after two very productive hours.

USE Board members hear web adviser Gary Vaughan describe how to work with our new website. From left: Susan Kousek, Gary Vaughan, Janet Cochran, Kathy Bush and Cheri Wubbels (back to camera).

**USE will require a full Web Team to sustain the site after the end of Gary’s pro bono assistance on 5/25. While Kathy, Janet, Mark and now Susan have jumped in to help, we continue to have openings for a backup USE Admin and Editor, and a couple of more limited roles as blog article Authors and Contributors. Any USE member is eligible!  

Please contact Kathy, our Web Team Lead, at mkbwrk1@hotmail.com if you would like to volunteer, to receive background information on the site and WordPress, and to join our first monthly USE Web Team Meeting at Janet’s house (TB Confirmed) on May 8, at 7:15 PM (also TB confirmed).  At the initial part of that meeting Gary plans to virtually demo via Google Hangout the general layout of USE’s new website, how to do various WordPress administrative roles, and the location of website training and help resources!**