2009 - 2010 Annual Report, The Potomac Star
April 7, 2010 by admin
Potomac Boat Club, Publications Committee
Chair: Penelope Wrenn Walz
Subject: Annual Report
I. First, thank YOU!
We have many people to thank for the success of the Potomac Star (the Star) this year, including Reilly Dampeer, Nick Davies, Camilla Durfee, Eric Edmonds, Marc Edmonds, Jim Edmonds, John Forrest, Marc Gwadz, Jim Hatch, Nick Holland, Jean Hopkins, Greg LeSage, Owen Lewis, Matt Madigan, Elizabeth Mygatt, Bob Price, Ed Ryan, Dick Schwartzbard, Chuck Selden, Julia (and Margot!) Shumway, Tom Stork, Cal Sutliff, Susan Trice, Steve Vermillion, but, most of all, YOU (now you can’t say we left you out).
II. About
A. Background
The Potomac Star is Potomac Boat Club’s online rowing news and information resource. It was launched in March 2009, as a replacement for The Blade, the semi-annual club newsletter previously published in hard copy format and distributed via regular mail to club members. The Potomac Star is produced by a volunteer staff with input invited from the club at large.
Please send your comments or suggestions for new content to Penelope at
B. Content
o Pages
§ Home
§ About
§ Club Rowing
§ Racing Programs
§ PBC Calendar
o Columns
§ PBC News
§ The Race Report
§ Special Reports and Polls
o General content and other features
§ Club information
§ News, articles, surveys, comments
§ Content sharing through AddtoAny
§ Google calendar
§ Youtube video feed
§ Password protected areas for member only information
§ Photo galleries fed by Flickr
§ Links to other PBC communication areas, including Potomacboatclub.org, PBC Yahoo Group, PBC Member Bulletin Board
§ Word Press publishing platform
§ Google Analytics and Google Apps
III. Newish on the Star!
A. USRowing News – Now you can access all the latest USRowing news via Twitter from the right sidebar of the Star
B. Twitter at pbc_potomacstar
o Reach includes members, other clubs and a few vendors
o Emergency information
o Notices and reminders
o Links to new posts on Potomacstar.com
C. Facebook moderated by the Star’s Abner Burnside
o Reach includes members, former members, remotely located members, mobile members
o Emergency or urgent information
o Notices and reminders
o Links to new posts on Potomacstar.com
o General commentary
IV. Interesting stuff … about you
A. A note on your privacy
Thanks to Google analytics, we get to see a certain amount of visitor information, like what browser and operating system you’re using, what city you’re visiting from, the keyword search you used to find the Star, and other information that we hope to use to understand what you’re really interested in and the things we might do in the future to make the Star better. Don’t worry, though … we don’t know exactly who you are, and even if we did, we wouldn’t tell anyone!
B. Visitors from all over!
Due to our small target user base (i.e., friends and members of Potomac Boat Club), and to avoid some of the administrative headaches that come with a heavily trafficked site, we haven’t made a huge effort to optimize the Star for search. In general, we use a subscribe-to RSS feed, the Yahoo group, Twitter, and Facebook to let people know when there is something new on the Star. We do on occasion optimize a particular post, like the post announcing open registration for the 2009 Head of the Potomac, or a particular page, like our Racing Programs page.
Interestingly, despite our somewhat intentionally low profile, last year, we found the Star was growing regular readership from all over the country … and even the world! Was it crack journalism? (Doubt it.) Prolific use of eco-friendly manure? (Could be.) The addition of our Men’s Sweep Gallery, which continues to be huge in the Netherlands, Brazil and Croatia? (Most likely.)
Well, whatever the reason, welkom, bem-vindo, and dobro došli! The following is a list of the Star’s top ten countries/locations (by number of visitors):
1. United States; top ten states are the following:
i. Virginia
ii. Maryland
iii. California
iv. DC
v. Massachusetts
vi. New York
vii. New Jersey
viii. Washington
ix. Texas
x. Illinois
2. United Kingdom
3. Canada
4. Australia
5. Germany
6. Italy
7. New Zealand
8. France
9. The Netherlands
10. Ireland
C. You lookin’ at me?
Google analytics prove to us that, like the rest of the world, many of us at PBC like to Google ourselves … and a few of you even have a number of friends/fans/cyber-stalkers who like to Google for you!
Below is a list of the top keyword searches that led folks to the Star. We’ve excluded the names of individuals to protect your privacy!
1. potomacstar.com
2. potomac star
3. potomac boat club
4. national team rowing
5. rowing club dc
6. scull Washington
7. rowing camp junior
8. row crew virginia
9. masters national championships
10. crew dc club
D. Top Posts of 2009
We’ve published 72 posts since the Star’s launch at the beginning of 2009. The following is a list of the top five posts of the year:
1. Our first PBC Profile: Guess who? (April 20, 2009)
2. Board to establish fund in Challinor’s memory (July 12, 2009)
3. Safety lesson learned the hard way (January 5, 2010)
4. Register for the 29th Annual Charlie Butt Scullers’ Head of the Potomac (August 21, 2009)
5. Let’s GO, Margot!!! (August 12, 2009)
V. Keep it coming!
The Potomac Star’s regular staff is a staff of one, one who realizes that she chairs a committee of zero other members (yet regularly uses plural pronouns when referencing staff), that further, she invented a staff member born approximately 165 years ago to find friends on Facebook, and that even right now, she is writing in the third person. Kind of pathetic, isn’t it? Yeah. We think so, too. But this is why you are so important to the Star’s future success! Please keep sending us your story ideas, photos, comments, and other suggestions for content! This is your Potomac Star, PBC! Thanks for letting us be part of it!
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