Welcome to the Ridgway Area High School

Mighty ELKERS Reunion Web Site!!

We're glad that you've heard about the www.elkers.com website () and that you may be considering to become a part of it.  First a bit of background, this whole project started with my older brother Larry Glantz from the RHS Class of '70, using one of his many hobbies to help his class organize their 30th reunion.  It was such a big success that when he heard about my class of ’76 reunion he offered to help me set it up for us.  As you can see from the many pictures and comments everyone found it to be a huge success and a lot of fun too!  And of course since it was so much fun and helpful naturally I had to do the right thing and pass it on to one of my close friends in the RHS Class of '77.  And so the trend continues!

Let us take a moment to outline the benefits you and your classmates will receive by signing up to have your class hosted on www.elkers.com.

Better Planning and Organization:

Typically every class has a few hardworking souls devoted to organizing the meetings for making plans, getting everyone to participate and finally coordinating the execution of the events.  Somewhere in this process the planning committee needs to get the word out to everyone in the class, typically via the US (snail) Mail.  Communications of any and all types provides a great way to inform.  The wonderful thing about a website is that it not only informs but also works as a quick feedback mechanism.  It is an opportunity for the committee to outline the possibilities and if there is uncertainty and/or a need for majority consensus it allows classmates to suggest or vote agree upon what everyone would like fun to do.  With a class website you can provide a survey to solicit their ideas, comments, and remarks for planning the venues and activities.  This feedback ensures that your plans will indeed create a successful event thus meeting your classmates’ highest expectations – especially those that cannot otherwise actively participate and/or attend the meetings because of their busy lives or where they live.  This has proved to be a valuable feature for the RHS Class of '77 who used their website for additional ideas/feedback on where to hold the events over a July weekend.  Originally they planned to go to Camp Kaelber for Friday night and then the Royal Motel on Saturday.  Feedback from classmates helped them realize that most wanted to stay at the camp the entire weekend so they were able to change their plans ahead of time to insure a more pleasurable time for all!  Talk with Michelle Bogacki and Jimmy Aiello, if you need more information.

Ice Breaker, News and Updates:

Another really GREAT feature is the Chat Room!  Not only can the event planning committee get the word out on ideas, changes, etc it is done so without US postage costs and is instantaneous so classmates far away get details and updates of the event immediately with no delay. 

The Chat Room also is a great way for the classmates to reconnect.  In fact, many classmates credit it for providing a better experience by allowing conversations to begin well before the actual reunion event.  Consider this comment from a member of the Class of '76 –

"’The Chat Room' was such a tremendous 'ice-breaker'!  Before the reunion we were all joking about what we were gonna wear and stuff.  Fab had us all laughing so hard telling us he was gonna wear his 'puffy shirt' like the one Kramer wears on Seinfeld!  It allowed everyone to reconnect with each so that when we actually got together our conversations weren't so stiff, heck we already had so many funny things going on that we were amazed at how well we picked up where we had left off!  Our 25th Reunion was an incredible event!  Most of us credit the website.  So much so that we still all use it daily".

Additional Website Features:

Calendar of Events – An outline to your classmates about meetings, gathering, hometown events, what dates you are planning for the reunion, etc.

Chat Room/Bulletin Board – This by far is the best feature and can pretty much “speak” for itself

Newsflash – Provides up the minute updates on plans, changes, birthdays, etc.

Classmate Info – A great way for classmates to share up to date personal contact information about where they live, work and play, the number of children, etc.

GuestBook – See who might be visiting your site to post comments and well wishes.

Surveys – This has proved to be a great way get feedback from classmates, solicit ideas on venue, type of entertainment, how much people want to spend what to do, etc.

Special Links – Easy to hyperlink to other websites of interest such as the Ridgway Record, Hotels, etc.

Photo Section – Ability to post old scrapbook and yearbook photos or photos from your planning sessions, the reunion, etc.

Counter – Helps everyone to see how many people actually visit the site see if this communications medium is working.

Webcam - this is a new item and would require a special high speed connection at an event site to allow out of town guests or those unable to attend because they twisted their ankle playing volleyball the week before (actually happened to one of my classmates) to attend virtually via a web connection!

Price:

Base Package – the starter price to build a base and maintain a Class of ’XX package is $300.  This includes all page design mockups, creation, hosting and monitoring.  Each class, however, is responsible for supplying photos and/or creative features to be incorporated within their site.  [if this fee seems like a lot, put this in perspective – the annualized cost to be a gold membership on classmates.com is $36 per person.  This means for only $2 per classmate you can get this going (assuming a class of 150 classmates].  Annualized cost thereafter is $100 per year to maintain.

Survey Forms – for an RSVP survey is included

Survey Forms – for classmate updates and posting in a results table is included

Photos Section – building and posting of old scrapbook photos, reunion planning and/or events tables $25 per event, (depending upon number, size, amount of non digital pictures that that we would need to scan, crop, resize and/or manipulate, etc.)

Miscellaneous – there are also many other features that can be designed and customized specifically for your class, including trivia contest pages, feature story of the week page, webcam, etc and we would be happy to discuss such a feature(s) and whether there would be any additional cost.

Please look this over, check with some of the other people you know that have used our site.  We would be happy to discuss this further and answer any questions you may have. 

We look forward to hear from you!

Best Regards,

Larry and Marty Glantz

Send us an email if you have any more questions to become part this website!