One of my favorite sayings is “It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness,” and while I hardly believe that all is dark within the cycling community in central Arkansas, I do believe we have some areas that could use a little light. That’s why I got involved with Bicycle Advocacy of Central Arkansas (BACA). ArkansasOutside.com is not really an advocacy website but we do have a mission of supporting outdoor activities and lifestyles so occasionally we touch on a bit of community support.

BACA recently changed over most of its board and it seemed time to update a few things for a group that’s been around more than 10 years. New styles of leadership, renewed focus on core mission and more advocacy was in order. I looked at areas that I could help promote the enthusiasm that was taking over the group. Communication seems to be my thing and I decided that a new website was in order.

I kept it simple and after about 3 months of work figuring out layouts, navigation, images, pulling some data from the old site and creating some new data, working with the new club president and treasurer on ideas, getting all the computer code for the new membership system (as the membership chair I was also working on a system of dues which the group had not previously collected) I finally had a website that would work well on any platform including smart phones and tablets.

Last night we introduced the site during a well attended general membership meeting at the Capital Hotel in downtown Little Rock. They seemed to like it. As additional support, ArkansasOutside.com is donating the first year of hosting fees for the site and I will continue to maintain it while teaching others how to manage it. We also got very lucky in finding a new web address for the site (I can’t believe this wasn’t taken).

So here you go, the new hub of all things pertaining to bicycle advocacy in central Arkansas:

www.BicycleAdvocacy.com