To: Ann Brackley Jorgensen, President
Illinois Judges Association (http://ija.org)

I hope this details the accomplishments this past year of the IJA (http://ija.org) Electronic Media Committee 2003 http://ija.org/commelec.htm (EMC), our current projects (ongoing or proposed) and any suggestions we have for things we can do in the future with our committee. I am very pleased with the positive reaction to our new Online Benchbook (http://ija.org/bb/benchbok.htm) and would urge each IJA member personally to consider making a contribution in the near future. It is slowly growing and I want it to grow faster and become a really positive and practical resource for Illinois Judges, not just for rote law helps, but practical stuff that does not involve legal research, the humdrum daily stuff we all do on the bench.

Our e-mail list now numbers about 484 e-mail addresses and is a USEFUL tool for the IJA leadership to assist them in quickly and cheaply contacting the membership. Nowhere was this proven more true than this past Spring, when IJA leadership used it for prompt alerts to the membership of the final vote on Third Reading in the Illinois House of SB 100 (COMP REV-JUDGES COLA-REPORTS) which resulted in a resounding reversal the next morning of the previous vote and successful passage (69 to 40) of the "Cola Repeal Repeal"!

With the growing size of the Benchbook area and my desire to archive all of the bb contributions into a self-extracting compressed Zip file (http://ija.org/bb/bb.exe) on the website, our storage needs on our host website (Prairienet) computer are growing as well.

Our committee is gratefuI to our leadership for $2000 received this past fiscal year for our host Prairienet. As you know Prairienet operates on voluntary contributions and not specific member assessments. This level of support helps fund all the goodies they provide to our webvisitors instantly, and 24 hours a day, from any computer on the planet!

Such as:

Maintaining our domain name (ija.org) with the Internet at large. Can you imagine how valuable a six-letter domain name is!!!! :-) As long as we never forget to pay the renewal fee (Maureen won't let it happen!), we'll never lose that valuable name! Nobody from the Indiana or Idaho Judges Association or the Illinois or Indiana or Idaho Jockeys Association can ever take it away from us! The only shorter domain names I have ever seen are four (cn.ca) and five letters (gm.com)!

Answering all my Internet technical questions quickly (which most of you do not know about!)

Maintaining the listproc for instant e-mail messaging to nearly 500 online IJA members and being available when we REALLY REALLY NEED it!!!!

Setting aside a secure password-protected directory area (http://ija.org/bb/) for the Benchbook and for very confidential communication to the membership from our officers (e.g. COLA stuff)

And links on our homepage (http://ija.org/) such as:

 Telephone Contacts          Benchbook in secure password-protected area
 (http://ija.org/bb/benchbok.htm)

 Judicial Inquiry Board      Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Comm.

 IJA Organization            "The Gavel" Newsletter (including storage of online "Gavel" PDF
                             editions in color)

 Judicial Elections          IJA Press Releases

 Ethics Opinions (searchable) (http://ija.org/ethicsop/opinions.htm)   Court Boundaries

 Juror Info Handbooks        Criticism Response Team

 Judges' Seminars  

 Law Links                   Internet Resources

 Public Information          Judges' Specialty Areas (with Forms)

 Judges' Retirement          Judges' Insurance and Investing        

 New Member Application      Retired Judge Marriage Signup

 Book Reviews                Drug and Alcohol Abuse Help

 09-02 By-Laws               Mediation for Judges

 2000 IJA Yearbook           1999 IJA Yearbook        

Prairienet (http://www.prairienet.org/) is non-profit and raises the bulk of its operating money through the University of Illinois Foundation each year (http://www.uif.uiuc.edu/). It is connected directly to the UI fast Internet pipes, and is available to any user on the planet 24 hours a day!

Our committee wants to start a Law Forum using the listproc e-mail to allow our membership e-mail list (listproc) software to allow questions by trial court judges on specific problem areas of cases they are currently handling.

The e-mail would not be encrypted, but would be restricted to our e-mail list members and be confidential.

To start it out at least, I would moderate and forward the question to the list members for a response from judges interested in a reply.

We could divide the forum into areas of specialty (civil, criminal, juvenile) and invite participants on a regular basis. I would set up an e-mail icon on the website homepage for judges only to send me their questions.

This would be of particular use to downstate judges in small counties who often do not have a regular opportunity for interchange in the law with colleagues. I expect most of the answers would come from Cook County judges!!!! :-)

Let's everyone read a book this year and write a book review to share at http://ija.org/bookrev/newbooks.htm!!

Co-Chair Joseph Kazmierski wrote me on May 27:

"Also, I think a comment should made about our members' increased awareness of the web site and their use of it as a ready source for many projects." Thanks, Joe!

I promise to help instigate the above website improvement suggestions in the future in behalf of our EMC.

Please consider this the report of our committee (http://ija.org/commelec.htm), since you know by now that the only way we do business is by e-mail and web pages! Please feel free to print it out for handout to your board members at the November 7, 2003 meeting, if you like.

Thank you for the privilege of serving the Illinois Judges Association.

October 7, 2003

Respectfully submitted:

Electronic Media Committee 2003 (http://ija.org/commelec.htm)

CHAIR: David A. Youck
VICE CHAIR: Joseph Kazmierski