Toastmasters International District 76 Japan(English Site)

The judging process of 2009-2010 Club Website Contest has completed successfully and the results were announced during the Spring Conference.
First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to the judges who contributed to the contest by spending approximately 30 hours per person, of their personal time on this project.

The results are as follows:

1st Place: Minato-Mirai Toastmasters Club
2nd Place: Aoyama Lunch Toastmasters Club
3rd Place: Hibiki Toastmasters Club

Congratulations!

Here I would like to report what the judges found through the judging process:

<Good Points>
1.    Compared with last year, as a whole, club Websites have considerably improved.
2.    There are many sites in which meeting reports convey the warm atmosphere of the club and encourage readers to visit the club.
3.    Many clubs renewed their club Websites and reconstructed the information in a well-organized manner.
4.    Many clubs found a way to improve the use of FreeToastHost (TI recommended free Web template). Last year, it was found that, on some sites, the menu names did not match the contents. However, this year, this problem was almost completely solved and it is easy to find necessary information now.
5.    Some clubs started to try new technology by posting videos on their Websites.


<Room for improvement>
1.    Some sites includeed long pages so that readers have to scroll many times to find necessary information. Redesigning this type of layout would be preferable.
2.    The top pages in some clubs are really heavy. Maybe this problem can be solved if you reduce sizes of pictures. Please use the following tool to measure the size of the top page as needed:

http://www.kaipara.net/cgi-bin/size_check.cgi

3.    A couple of clubs modified the Toastmasters logo. As this is not allowed, please use the original logo.
4.    Some club still have old information about Toastmasters posted. As of May 26, 2010, Toastmasters “has nearly 250,000 members in more than 12,500 clubs in 106 countries.”Please update your Website accordingly.

In any case, we were really impressed by the hard work by the VPPRs (or Webmasters or members). We can imagine they tried to apply their original and creative ideas to their Websites to convey their clubs' atmospheres.
We sincerely hope that you will pass along your passion and skills to the next Webmasters.