Reflections On Being IHS Website Editor

As is also posted in the IHS website, I will be leaving my position as Website Editor of The IHS Online. [Note: This post is from 2007].

I am now into my sixth year as Website Editor. While I will always think of myself primarily as a player and teacher, I have certainly enjoyed contributing to the IHS through this work. The site needed many updates when I was brought on board by then IHS Publications Editor Jeff Snedeker, and I enjoyed the opportunity to first overhaul the old “purple” site then to completely rebuild the site with the help of hornist and web designer Bruce Hembd into the IHS website we have today. I have posted virtually every text update to the IHS site, and have done my best to keep it all up to date and useful to the horn playing community.

As I pondered the site over the summer however I was reminded of the words of our departing department chairman, that he had come into the position with goals, he had achieved those goals, and it was time to turn things over to someone with a new set of goals. This is very much as I feel now; I wanted to get the site in shape, then developed a plan and rebuilt it, and now it is time to move on.

On top of that, the position has become over time one more suited to a person with more technical skills related to web design than I possess. I am not a web designer, just someone who had some technical knowledge and was brave enough to try to do the job. It is time for someone with new ideas and more actual technical knowledge to take over.

I will continue to serve the IHS however as Chair of the Meir Rimon Music Commissioning Fund and will be open to serving the IHS in other capacities in the future.

Again, it was a privilege to serve the IHS as Website Editor and I enjoyed working with the publications editors and with Bruce Hembd.

UPDATE 2009: Interesting that Bruce and I would work together again and launch Horn Matters!