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PeterBall

Page history last edited by PBworks 17 years ago

This is a permanent record of a MPC Blog posting

Sunday, March 04, 2007

Goodbye and thanks to a Webmaster

 

Peter Ball of the Hawks Bay is no longer running the HB website (Simon Hurley will now carry on). Building and maintaining a website is a lot of work and takes many hours. I know I speak for many of you when saying "Thanks for what you've done Pete." Recently I asked Pete some questions:

 

Q: What year did you start the Wellington website?

 

A: From memory it was about 1995, we had just shifted from Wellington to Raumati and found this game of Petanque that intrigued us after having seen it played in France. I thought starting a website would be a good way of promoting the game and keeping everyone informed on what was going on in the region.

 

Q: Was this the first Petanque website in New Zealand?

 

A: Not at all sure about that one. It was certainly one of the very early ones, though.

 

Q: What year did you start the HB website?

 

A: We shifted here to Hawke's Bay in late 2003 and started the website shortly after.

 

Q: What is your reason/s for stopping?

 

There's two or three reasons, Tom.

Firstly, I must say that after several years of actively playing Petanque the pull to play Petanque has waned somewhat, and with so much else to do up here in Napier to fill in our time we thought we would seek different fields. So with my interest waning and not being present at many events, it soon became very clear that unless I continued to be active in Petanque, new material for the site would just not eventuate. Despite requests to the clubs up here to provide material for the site, with some rare exceptions it just didn't happen. I gleaned some results etc from the newspaper and transcribed them to the site, but then came to the conclusion that the whole job would be better done by someone still active in the sport who can go to the various events and provide reports / pictures, etc. So I advised Murray Porter last year that when the website comes up for renewal I would not be carrying on as webmaster. Murray then persuaded Simon Hurley to carry on, and I have now passed on all the access information for him to continue.

 

So there we are. Whilst Helen and I have enjoyed our Petanque life, it is time to move on. We have met many good friends along the way whom we still remember and keep contact with. And who knows - in our dotage we will probably get a bit more active, but in the meantime vintage cars and Art Deco keep us pretty well occupied.

 

posted by NZPC Editor (Tom) @ 8:02 PM

3 Comments:

 

At 4:05 PM, Anonymous said...

Hello..

You have done a magnificent job Peter, and we have thoroughly enjoyed your website. We appreciate all the time and effort you have spent over the years keeping us up-to-date as news and results came to hand.

 

Rex and Shirley Hayes (Kapiti club)

 

At 4:33 PM, NZPC Editor (Tom) said...

1995 is widely recognised as the year the Web became accessible to the general public. In that year computer ownership was extremely low and I still remember that for the next four years my private email address was the international internet contact to NZP. I think is is safe to assume that your first Petanque website was indeed the first in New Zealand. Thanks Pete. Hope to see you on the piste before you reach your dotage :-)

 

At 9:02 AM, NZPC Editor (Tom) said...

Being a webmaster is a lot of work and it is often difficult to get people to email information. Just to get a photo of the winners or results is something webmasters always have to ask for - it rarely arrives without asking first. Last year I wrote:

 

"22/09/06 It appears that a select group of people are receiving SMS progress reports from Grenoble. The two webmasters (Pete from the HB and yours truly from Masterton) who last year made a real effort with bringing you news as it came to hand, are evidently not part of this SMS group. The sad thing is, that both regions (Wairarapa and Hawkes Bay), have players in Grenoble!. Clubs have also done a lot of fund raising."

 

To be sidelined like that, makes one wonder whether one should carry on at all.

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