PolOrg Initiative for Polish Washington

The PolOrg project develops efficient, free public relations tools for friends of Poland in the Washington metropolitan area.

In order to get an idea of what's already accomplished, please click on the PolOrg.com icon below to familiarize yourself with the new Web site (be sure to select the Washington DC metro regional information), but then please come back to this page for more details.

The PolOrg project brings the following benefits to everyone who supports Polish culture and Polish interests in Washington and the vicinities:

• Increased traffic on Polish Web sites.  Most Polish groups of the Washington metropolitan area already maintain their own Web sites, for example polishlibrary.org, paaa.us, polishcenterdc.org and pacwashmetrodiv.org.  More visitors will come to those Web sites thanks to links to those Web sites from the PolOrg portal.  The PolOrg portal already attracts significant Web traffic--more traffic than all of the Polish Washington Web sites combined.  Greater Web traffic flowing from the PolOrg portal translates into higher membership numbers and better event attendance for organizations whose Web sites will be visited by more people.
• Directory of Polish organizations.  A person browsing the PolOrg portal can see information about each Polish group in Washington even if he or she doesn't leave the portal.  In other words, even if a person browsing the PolOrg portal doesn't click on a link leading to a Web site of a specific Polish Washington group, that person will still see plenty of information about the particular group on the PolOrg portal.  The PolOrg site is capable of featuring each group's description, photographs, contact information, press releases and up-coming events information.  Using its own PolOrg login and password, each group can update its information on the portal, including new project descriptions, names and contact data of newly elected officers, etc.  This is the most efficient way, and in fact the only feasible way, of maintaining an up-to-date directory of local leadership, because none of us has the resources to pay a staffer to keep all the mission statements, project descriptions and leadership rosters current for all the groups as things change year after year.  The self-service approach for maintaining the directory is the only viable method.
• Promotion of Poland-related events.  The event calendar appears in two forms: on the Web and by email.  Either way, the event calendar serves the purpose of promoting Poland-related events in the Washington metropolitan area.  Greater promotion leads to higher attendance and membership.  As an added benefit, the widely available event calendar helps Polish community leaders in planning and minimizing unnecessary conflicts of schedule.
  • Persons who don't want to receive any additional emails can view the calendar online
    • on the PolOrg portal or
    • on a PolOrg-powered calendar page published on another Web site.
  • Persons wishing to receive the event calendar by email can
    • subscribe to the calendar directly from PolOrg or
    • receive the calendar via an already existing Washington-based Polish mailing list.
• Easier submission of event information.  The PolOrg Web site makes it easy for Washington-based Polish community activists to submit event information on behalf of their respective organizations to a joint calendar, using simple Web-based forms.  Each group receives its own PolOrg login ID and password, which assures that event information is coming from an authorized source.  Using the PolOrg ID and password, each group can enter, update, revise or delete its event information independently.
• Time-saving, automated compilation of event information.  As various groups submit their event information, PolOrg's computer automatically compiles the information into a calendar in a chronological order.  The computer recompiles the calendar everyday to eliminate events that already occurred and add events that are coming up.  No human has to worry about making sure that event information submitted weeks earlier is repeated regularly until the event occurs.  Anybody who has ever compiled and published an events calendar "by hand" knows how quickly these seemingly simple editing tasks add up to hours of tedious work.  PolOrg allows community volunteers to save time and focus on more creative tasks that can't be done by a computer.
• Support for existing mailing lists and Web sites.  The event calendar will be forwarded to Polish Global Village, but the same arrangement can be made for other lists, such as Ted Mirecki's PACWASHMETRODIV or Dr. Michael Szporer's Siec.  The idea is to support and foster existing lists, instead of replacing them.  Moreover, mailing list administrators can configure their list servers to automatically forward the event calendar from PolOrg to their mailing lists on a regular basis, e.g. weekly, without human intervention.  The same principle guides PolOrg's relationship with other Web sites.  PolOrg-powered events calendar Web pages can enhance the informational value of Web sites belonging to specific Polish groups.

The project started in early 2003.  Considering that most tasks in the project are performed by community volunteers from a number of groups, the project's initial implementation will take months.

If you represent a Washington-based Polish group and wish to update your group's information on the PolOrg portal, please contact Marcin Zmudzki at marcin@zmudzki.net or (202) 234-7045.

PolishWashington.com