Associated with the American Federation of Mineral Societies |
Jim Flora WEBMASTER Personal Website |
Member of the Southeast Federation of Mineral Societies |
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Associated with the American Federation of Mineral Societies |
Jim Flora WEBMASTER Personal Website |
Member of the Southeast Federation of Mineral Societies |
My name is Jim Flora and I've been a mineral collector all my life but seriously taking up this hobby back in 1985. I started by joining the Gem & Mineral Society of the Palm Beaches located in West Palm Beach, FL. This club had a wonderful lapidary shop run by some real dedicated members/instructors. That was where I learned to "cab" and cut rocks. Before I moved to the Atlanta area, in the fall of 1991, I was elected the Society's second Vice President in charge of programs. In Georgia I joined both the Georgia Mineral Society (Atlanta) and the Cobb County Gem & Mineral Society (Marietta, GA). The Florida club went on few field trips but the Georgia clubs went on one or two trips a month. This was the area where I really enjoyed myself. Out in the woods, in some old abandoned mine, digging big holes in the earth with the hope of finding beautiful minerals that I could add to my collection for display and to my inventory for lapidary work. During the period of 1997 through 2002, I was the Field Trip Chair for the Georgia Mineral Society and conducted at a monthly trip to field collect minerals and/or fossils. Sometimes we had multiple monthly field trips. I decided in the summer of 1998 to try and create an association of field trip leaders within the Southeast Federation of Mineralogical Societies (SFMS) to help share and expand the variety of mineral and fossil collecting field trips open to GMS members. Since my initial concept was put out to member club's of the SFMS, this idea has become a reality. The DMC is now an official program of the SFMS. 30+ Southeast Federation clubs have signed on to this concept of field trip sharing. During November of 2001, the Southeast Federation of Mineralogical Societies created the Field Trip Committee as a standing committee of the SFMS and incorporated the DMC as it's field trip sharing program. I became the SFMS Chair of the SFMS Field Trip Committee and the program coordinator of the DMC field trip sharing program. At the time the DMC was made the operating part of the Field Trip Committee, there were 25 SFMS associated clubs participating in this field trip program. In February of 1998, I became the Webmaster for GMS and created a comprehensive club website on the Internet. The following year I established our new domain name of www.gamineral.org and had the Society reserve this name for a period of ten years. Our website is probably on of the largest Gem and Mineral Society sites on the Internet with over 550+ pages of content and over 3,000 pictures and images of one kind or another (as of 11/16/2007). During March of 2002 I was asked to create and become the new webmaster for the SFMS website. I absorbed the material that Fred Sias had been using on the old SFMS website and added many new web pages (100+) and timely features to this new rebuilt website ( SFMS INTERNET SITE). The first of January of 2003 I abandoned Atlanta (and the traffic!!) and moved into my new home on the border of GA and N.C. in the little mountain village of Hiawassee, Georgia. This move prompted me to give up my duties as Field Trip Chair for the Georgia Mineral Society but I continue to work through the Internet on all of my other GMS/SFMS duties. Jim Jim Flora
706.896.8040
(Our web site) Published in "Tips and Trips", Vol. XXXVIII/10, Oct. 1999, Page #6 For those members who do not yet own a computer( you know who you are!) and cannot take a peek at our GMS web pages, I thought that I would give you an update on what our home on the Internet has to offer our members and the world. We went "live" on the Internet during January of 1998. In a little under two short years we've had over 5,200 visitors and established one of the largest mineral and fossil club sites on the "net". The GMS web site currently holds OVER 200 viewable pages of data on almost every aspect of our society! We now have over 400 club photographs and over 160 animated graphic objects and line drawings to make our pages livelier. One of the goals of our Internet presence is to inform the general public on what we are all about! We want to make it as easy as possible for a visitor to learn enough about our society to decide whether we are the gem, mineral, and fossil society for them! Then, make it just as easy to join up as a member. It must be working since our membership rolls have swelled to near 700+ with a good portion coming from the Internet. Another one of our Internet goals is to keep the GMS membership current on all of our many monthly activities. "GMS HAPPENINGS", on our main menu page, displays a current monthly calendar of every official GMS event taking place during the month. Each one of these entries is linked to a specific page of information about this particular GMS happening! So, if you've misplaced your club newsletter, log on to the web and find out what's going on in the world of GMS! Pictures, pictures and more pictures! Our extensive "Photo Menu" page contains links to pages of pictures from 28 field trips; pictures from our special project, Adopt-A-Highway; extensive photos snapped during our May and December club shows; photographs taken during Mineral, Micromount, and Fossil Section meetings; pictures of our yearly October banquet and June club picnic on the "Hooch", and a special "Members Photo" page where you can post your own mineral and fossil photographs. One of the most important picture pages we have is the one on our monthly meeting at the Chamblee Public Library. On it you will see some of our past speakers, the "door prize" table, the "field trip" table, our members, guests, and club officers. In fact, ALL of our club pictures exhibit to the world our most important asset - YOU, the GMS member! History? We now have a completely reedited version of almost all of the 64 year history of the Georgia Mineral Society! The data was taken and summarized from old club newsletter articles by Hal Cain & Georgia Montgomery (GMS Historian - 1977) and recent historical additions were written by Kim Cochran and Dr. Marcella Wood. If you are interested in what went on in GMS during the 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, and 80's, drop by the history page. For the recent past, we've provided a two year historical list of our monthly speakers and their topics to show how timely and educational our general meeting can be. The "Sections Menu" page consists of links to complete mini web sites for each of our special interest groups; Mineral, Micromount, Fossil, Gem, and Junior sections. There you will find current section meeting information, special section field trips, section pictures and member's articles, Internet links to information pertinent to each section, and much more. On our GMS "Writings Menu" page we published a collection of a dozen or more original articles, poems, and short stories written by some of our members. If you would like to contribute one of your articles from "Tips and Trips", send me your manuscript in the mail or through e-mail and I'll see that it gets republished on our web site! Field Trips? As I mentioned above, besides the 28 pages of pictures taken on our field trips, we have detailed flyers you can view on the last 12 months of our field trip. This list does not discuss the field trips that are yet to take place! Only GMS members who receive our e-mail broadcast and the "Tips and Trips" newsletter know about our current field trip events. For return visitors the "What's New" page is where you can find fast links to all the web site changes and additions that have taken place during the last month or two. Matter of fact, most of next months club information is already incorporated into our web site 3 to 4 weeks before you read about it in the following months "Tips and Trips" newsletter! So, if you want the news before it's news, log on to the GMS web page! Now that you know what you're missing, you need to purchase your own computer or go next door and use your neighbor's computer or visit your local library and log on to GMS on the web at http://www.mindspring.com/~gamineral/index.htm For those technically interested, I currently use "Netscape Composer" (free) to visually put together each web page; "Arachnophilia" (free) to edit the HTML code and, Microsoft "Image Composer" for most of the graphics editing. Of course, each new web page must to be tested under both Microsoft's "Internet Explorer" and Netscape's "Navigator". I would guess that 70 per cent of the time each new web page will not work the same under either one of these web browsers. Now…if only there was a single standard that both companies would agree to follow?
Drop me an e-mail and tell me what you think about our web site. I specifically would like to know what you like and dislike and what you think should be expanded or added. |
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Send e-mail to: gmsmail@gamineral.org |
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