Steve Werner: A Guest Blog by Amy

A few posts ago I invited Amy to guest post about Steve’s forum at CKI convention. She has graciously accepted and what follows is her take on the workshop.

Steve Werner: the Man, the Mystery, the Workshop

Some of you may remember a day (or two) back in early February when Steve Werner, the Kiwanis International Webmaster sent the Unofficial CKI staff several emails which insulted us and our work. (See Pete’s post on the subject here.) Among other things, Steve pointed out that we were using an “entry level programming language.” Imagine my excitement when ICON rolls around and Steve is giving a workshop on how to use the new Circle K site. Finally! A chance to see what a REAL programmer does! This is my story.

I was accompanied by several brave members of my district. We sat in the front. While Unofficial CKI was not mentioned for the first 50 minutes of the workshop, there was still a lot to be learned from Mr. Werner:

• Anyone who wants to can take anything they want off the new website. Images…anything. Go ahead and steal it. As long as you are a member, it’s cool with Steve. He didn’t say it, but I have to imagine this statement applies to everyone except those members who are involved with Unofficial CKI.
• www.dmoz.org is the most important website in the entire world. Steve owns the Kiwanis section of it. He hasn’t gotten around to owning the Circle K section, and mentioned that any one of us could actually beat him to it and apply to edit the section, but he doubted anyone would. You underestimate us, my friend.
• The new website is coded with ASP and hosted on a Windows Server. This is way better than PHP!
• circlek.org cannot put up ANYTHING that was not produced by the International office. Otherwise there is a liability. So it doesn’t matter that the website ad hoc committee developed some templates for club websites. Steve wont allow them. Also, the ad hoc committee never did anything in time for Steve to use. This is why nothing they do is taken into account. Does someone else want to call bullshit here or should I?
• Steve will give advice to clubs wanting to build a website. The first important thing is that you need to have meta tags and keywords. The other advice is that you need a webhost. I’m sure everyone is well on their way now! To his credit, I’m sure if anyone had specific questions, Steve would be happy to help them out. You have to give him some props for that.

For the most part, the workshop consisted of Steve showing us the many features of the new website. I especially enjoyed the many sections that are still “under construction.” The fun really started though when steve opened up his recent history and the third link from the top was www.unofficialcki.org. Snickering erupted from the formerly quiet crowd, though Steve appeared to not take notice. Several minutes later an attendee that I am not familiar with asked “Did you get any of your ideas from the Unofficial Site?” Steve denied this (profusely), and went on to say that he doesn’t even care about the site at all and other untrue nonsense. Following up, the same person asked “If you don’t care about the site, why did you just visit it?” Steve says he was checking to see if it had been updated, and that no one uses it.

After this, he went on to mumble about the site (”I expected this to happen”) and explained how he blocked the links from UCKI to circlek.org, but UCKI got around it. Since UCKI is using a google feature to get around the block, this actually helps to give circlek.org a higher rating. “I’m actually glad they did it.” Steve seemed to think he had one-upped UCKI in this endeavor; What he doesn’t realize is that it’s not our goal to hurt the official site. If we are helping them out - Great!

People fired questions at him for a little while. I can’t remember everything, but it was quite humerous. A member of my district asked why Unofficial CKI couldn’t use things from the circlek.org site as Steve had previously mentioned that it was ok. Steve said that the difference was that the Unofficial CKI Admins were not members. The Reply: “They used to be members, and one of them is sitting right next to me.” I was outed.

Steve explained again that he felt the unofficial CKI site to be unimportant, and restated that he didn’t care about it. (defensive… but then who wouldn’t be?) Indentity revealed, I decided to ask my first question:

Amy: If you aren’t worried about the site, why did you report us to the FBI?
Steve: I was told to write that by the office.
Amy: So, did you actually report us to the FBI?
Steve: No.
Amy: So you just made that up?
Steve: Yes.

Whew! Imagine my relief to find out that we weren’t actually reported to the FBI! After this, a member of the website ad hoc committee took her turn ripping into him. The entire room got the very distinct impression that Steve was making it impossible for the ad hoc committee to do anything worthwhile for the members.

Steve did mention that his problem with Unofficial CKI was that the creators were disregarding the many hours of work he had put in. This was never the intent, and if he doesn’t realize it by now, sad to say, he probably never will.

The session ended and before I left, I told Steve how nice it was to finally meet him. Ok, I admit it… it was a lie. But the fun didn’t end there! Steve went and complained to Casey Keller, telling her that I started everything. My administrator was also told, and he came to reprimand me, saying that this was not the time nor the place to bring up the situation. Luckily, Steve’s attempt to get me into trouble failed. There were plenty of witnesses to vouch for the fact that not only did I NOT bring it up, but I was also far from the most vocal person in the room.

An observant person might notice that Steve keeps lying and it keeps coming back to bite him in the ass. I see an easy solution to this, but maybe it’s just me.

A few points I’d like to add:

• I am now the editor of the Circle K Section of www.dmoz.org. It’s going to take a bit for the site to update to show it, but when it does I’ll let you know. I’m sure Steve will be thrilled that I beat him to it.
• I’d like to point out the sarcasm of of Amy’s statment: “This is way better than PHP!”
• Using Google-links does, in fact, NOT add to the target sites page rank, instead it adds to GOOGLE’S PageRank… something I’m sure it needs no help with. Sorry Stevie-poo.
• Steve was upset that we disregarded his HOURS of hard work. Let me ask you this… if you order a pizza, and two hours later it’s still not at your house, do you CARE how many hours they spent making it? I don’t care how many hours Steve puts in. I really don’t. It’s obvious that there are a hell of oa lot of people in Circle K that can do much more, in much less time, and with a much higher quality than he does. Our INTENT was not to disregard his work, but I think we should be focused more on the QUANTITY and QUALITY of the work that’s actually completed. What are the results?