Di
Active Member
tMP Exclusive Interview with David W Ashworth
Webmaster - Boarshurst Silver Band
Webmaster - Boarshurst Silver Band
My name is David W Ashworth, I am the web master of the Boarshurst Silver Band web site. I am also the Musical Director of the band and have been here since May this year. I have always said that it is important to have a web site and seeing as the band did not have one I wrote one for them. I have been involved with the Brass Band movement for over 50 years now.
I first got interested in web design when I retired from work in 2002. I cannot abide doing nothing so I enrolled for a web design course which I completed and gained a diploma in web design, Since then I have been involved with several band personalities and Orchestral Players prepareing and building their web sites. I must admit I cannot understand why people spend a fortune on companies building their sites when a site like this one should not cost a great deal of money to build.
It actually took me about 6 hours to build the shell but then time and requested input by the owners sets the time limits and cost for the final build. To be honest it should be only about £250.00. You can maintain it yourselves once it is built with only a short level of instruction.
I write all my sites in HTML and therefore anyone with basic HTML knowledge can run it.
It suprises me the amount of sites which do not advertise themselves properly. Every site should hold some band history, a list of engagement dates and at least one page identifying the players and conductor in the band. I mean come on, this is the only advert which carries the bands name around the world via the internet.
I only work on the site for approx 2 hours per week and then to be honest it is spent tidying it up.
When you look to the future I forsee the days when we fill in Contest application forms via the internet. And also the future holds the booking of bands for engagements can be done via the bands internet site. In time every site should be able to have a customer enquiry form for a direct enquiry so that questions can be asked and answered through the site without using e-mail.
There are several sites I visit daily, concerning banding I visit of course themouthpiece.com to catch up on the various forum catagories which I read, I read the pages of 4 bars rest to catch up the news from the banding world. I also very often look into the web site IBEW.com, a very good site for referring too and surfing brass band websites. I also like to look at the various Brass Band Association web sites. Its suprising what you can find on them. The Kapital Promotions website is also very informative regarding the National Finals and Area Contests.
When not banding I spend as much time as I can with my friends and family, I do have 8 Grand kids so they keep me busy. I also follow the playing careers of several of my somewhat extended brass band family. So visits to brass band websites is a standard practice, god help me if someones has won something and I don't know about it when they phone me up.
In banding I do a lot of work as a freelance conductor and regularly adjudicator at various brass band competitions as well as choral competitions. I thoroughly enjoy working with Amateur Operatic Societies as M.D. of musicals and comic opera's. I am in particular looking forward to visiting the Granite City Brass Band in Aberdeen where I have been engaged to take them to the Scottish Areas at Dundee in 2009. My personal site is www.dashworth.co.uk