By Jessica Wasmund<br><a href="mailto:jessica.wasmund@gnnewspaper.com">E-mail Jessica</a>
When Kevin Lake missed the signups for his children’s youth soccer league because the advertisement was in the Penny Saver — and under a foot of snow in his front yard — he began looking for a solution.
Lake developed a community-based Web site for Orleans County, along with two business partners: Timothy Dunn of Albion and Adam Barie of Elba. In April, Lake e-mailed postcards across Orleans County to businesses and organizations he felt might benefit from its development, and eventually came up with www.orleanslife.info.
The site features many activities taking place in the county, and all non-profit groups are able to post free of charge. This includes everything from recreational sports and T-ball to church barbecues. Additionally, many school districts have taken advantage of the offer by posting information on the site.
“Sometime in October, we reached 100,000 hits since April, and little better than 60 businesses advertise on the site,” Lake said. “Other people have tried this, but from what I’ve seen, this has been the one site that has worked.”
“Sometimes even bands will e-mail me letting me know they’re having a show, and we’ll toss it up there,” he said. “Someone can quite easily hop on the site and find out activities and say, ‘Oh, so this is what’s going on!’ ”
Lake has spoken with various county officials to link up his own site with theirs, including Wayne Hale from the Orleans County Tourism Office and Charles Kinsey, the director of computer services for Orleans County. The county Web site will launch a makeover of its own site in the near future, where www.orleanslife.info will be the featured site of the month.
“Kevin and I and Chuck Nesbitt had met early in the spring regarding the site and how we could better utilize it,” Kinsey said. “It is a good resource — we’d like to do what we can to support people using the site and the tools on there.”
At this point, Kinsey is unsure what kind of specific promoting the county Web site will have for Lake’s site, calling it a “fine line.”
Lake feels another benefit of the site is the lack of “politics” on it.
“The site is clean, even with the forums, because we monitor it,” he said. “We won’t get to the point where the Republican dinners are advertised — we stay away from that completely.”
The user-friendly site also features a number of polls and activities to take advantage of. Registration is free, and the front page is set up like a home page and features an interactive business directory and local weather.
Only local businesses are allowed to advertise, keeping all the content pertaining to Orleans County.
Plans are already under way to make a version for Genesee County.
“So far it’s been received extremely well — The Club in Albion said they had 17 people come through the doors who claimed they had never even know the place existed until they saw the listing here,” Lake said.
Contact editor Jessica Wasmund at 798-1400, ext. 8225
