On Saturday morning, I'll have the pleasure of delivering the Technology Committee's report to the Board of Governors during the board's Town Hall meeting at the Dallas National Money Show. 

I'm also the guy who generally live tweets the Board of Governors meetings. And since it's a little hard to give a report and live tweet it at the same time, I thought I'd post my report here to start and update tomorrow with any interesting discussion that comes out of the meeting. 

My report is twofold - what we've accomplished since our last report to the board in Philadelphia and what's on the horizon. 

What we've done since Philly

The new blog: If you're reading this, you're already well aware that The Exchange, the ANA blog, is now up and running. Members can leave comments on posts by simply logging in to the Members-Only section of the site. We've built in some social media integration for easy sharing, and we're starting to get a stable of bloggers together who will be able to blog about the various aspects of numismatics. 

(This seems like a good spot to remind everyone that we're always interested in having members contribute to The Exchange. Email me at jsherlock@money.org if you'd like to share your research, expertise or opinions on numismatics here.)

The new search bar: There's a lot of info on Money.org, and it's not always easy to find. But the new search bar will do wonders to solve that problem. If you haven't used it yet, just check out the box in the top-right corner of this page. Everything on Money.org will index here, including posts on The Exchange. 

Re-writing our verification site: In order for ANA members to take advantage of their ANA benefits, we need a system that will allow our vendors to easily verify that yes, you are an ANA member, and yes, you are entitled to a particular benefit. Without getting too technical, we are currently re-developing our verification site to make it easier for our database to talk to other databases, which means our vendors can spend less time verifying your membership and more time helping you take advantage of your membership. 

Re-writing and expanding the Dealers-Only section: Currently, our dealers-only section doesn't have much to it. We're hoping to turn this into a site that ANA-member dealers can use for finding out info on upcoming shows, securing a table, checking their account statuses, etc. etc. 

What's next

Our next big projects will be to bring back and further develop the Money 'Musements website, a place for kids to learn about coins through interactive games. Rod Gillis has developed a tremendous Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story that we hope to have online ahead of Christmas Break for YN's to enjoy over the holiday season. 

We've also been recording the Money Talks presentations that were held in Philadelphia and Dallas, and we hope to have those edited into vodcasts (visual podcasts) by the end of the year. Those will be made available in the Members-Only section of Money.org. 

But the biggest of the future initiatives is the continued development of a new Money.org. We're still in the planning initial planning phases of the site, so we're still looking for feedback from members on what types of features they'd most like to see on Money.org. We hope to have some major news to announce on the website development soon. 

If you're in Dallas and want to attend the Town Hall, come to Room 174 at the Dallas Convention Center. If you're not in Dallas but want to follow along with the news, follow the live tweets on Twitter.