Sandy Bauer and Jim Weichel – Nov 2022
Sandy’s dad was in the Army, so she grew up going to
schools all across the country and in Europe. Her interest in genealogy started early – she’s been doing it for more than 30 years and is a DAR member. As a programmer and project manager, she worked for a number of companies in Silicon Valley as well as across the country. At the same time, she’s been the webmaster for both profit and non-profit organizations.
Sandy joined WVGS in 2015 and first volunteered for the newly – created job of Records Manager. She organized the papers the Society had in binders and in files, created a file naming structure, a retention policy and actually scanned all the records and put them on the server.
When the website needed updating, Sandy stepped up again. She and Jim Weichel held multiple meetings with members and volunteers to determine what was needed on the website. She then worked with Jim, the point person on the project.
Sandy has continued to be our Webmaster, quickly responding to requests to post new material, update the front page, and contributing ideas to make the website better even though she recently moved to Houston, Texas, to be near family. Thank you, Sandy.
Jim Weichel was the point person for the website project. Jim grew up in a very small town (600 people) in Kansas, went to college at Kansas State and then Purdue University, graduating with a degree in electrical engineering. Jim says he’s being doing genealogy (or, rather, helping his wife Lynda, do genealogy) for 20 years.
Jim and Lynda have traveled to many states for on-site research, as well as to Germany and Poland to discover their ancestors. Jim worked at Bell Labs in software and management for 29 years before helping form a company based on Bell Labs research. He was a Chief Operating Officer at GlobalView Software, the Chief Information Officer and Strategic Planning Vice President at O’Connor & Associates, and ended his working career as a technology/management consultant to Fermi National Laboratory.
Retiring didn’t mean he quit working, however. Jim and Lynda moved to Sun City in 2017 and joined WVGS. He volunteered to help with the website project as he’d already built one for Fox Valley Genealogical Society in Illinois. About 2018, WVGS found itself with a website based on software no longer supported by the company that made it. But CEC had extensively written programs to extend that basic software to provide resources that had to continue – a membership system, a library catalog program, a store. The bid from outside companies to make the transition came in at more than $50,000.
After choosing WordPress basic software, Jim and Sandy started the project of creating the new website. For over a year, Jim and Sandy met virtually – Jim in Illinois and Sandy in Arizona. Jim wrote more than 10,000 lines of code to meld WordPress and its plugins with our existing resources. Along with Ed Crabbe, Jim provided the functionality that enabled our volunteers to manage Membership, Catalog, Obituaries, Surnames, Library Entry and the Store.
The work didn’t stop after the website was successfully launched. Since then, Jim has added the ability for members to change their profiles online, added layers of security, added the Donation buttons on the front page and just recently the ability to sign up online for library tours. Each of those projects required lines and lines of code. Jim thinks he’s spent somewhere between 1500 and 2000 hours on WVGS’ website.
Both Sandy and Jim have the ability to work with non-techies, a signal advantage in this Society. But Jim also has the ability and willingness to step back and see the larger picture. He has always seen beyond the immediate questions being asked as to the context and implications for the Society. Thank you, Jim.