President's Corner
by Nancy Birk, UBPN President

May 2003

To the UBPN Community:

Greetings.

By now, you all should have received the latest issue of Outreach, which includes information about our upcoming camp over Labor Day Weekend as well as other articles and stories that we hope are of interest. Registrations for camp are already coming in to the UBPN office, many of you smartly registering before May 31 to get the early bird registration rate (registration fee of $15 per person is waived if registered before May 31). Early registration helps us to plan more efficiently and effectively and we thank you for letting us know as soon as possible if you are coming. Please use the camp message board to post any questions you might have about camp. We will also use that board to announce any additions or changes to the tentative camp schedule.

As also mentioned in the current Outreach, work has begun on a Therapist resource directory. If you would like a questionnaire sent to your therapist, send the contact information to Kathleen Kennedy (kathleen@ubpn.org).

I'm often asked about our statistics. So I thought I would devote this month's corner to statistics, just to let you all know about some numbers that you might find of interest. We have been keeping statistics on traffic on our website and also on phone calls, emails and surface mail that comes into the UBPN office for the past three years. Each year our numbers have doubled for the numbers of questions fielded via email and phone. There are currently over 3250 individuals on our mailing list who receive Outreach and other mailings. That in itself represents incredible growth but the largest growth has by far been on the website.

Last month, April, 2003, we had over 11,966 unique visitors to the ubpn.org site. There were a total of 562,692 hits on the site (a hit represents every time a single page is viewed). You might find it interesting that the days with the most hits, in other words, the most active days of the week on the site are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, followed by Mondays and Fridays, with the slowest days being the weekend days. Looking at all of 2002, the busiest month was October, followed by November and then May and April. Since October is the month in which we have our Awareness drive, that points to some success in getting the word out and is great feedback that our efforts are paying off. The total number of hits for 2002 was 5,777,081 which means we have a very active site. The most viewed pages are the message boards, followed by the home page, and then the medical resource directory pages. We even know what search engine most people use to find us and that is Google. Most of you also have Windows 98 as your operating system. Usage is worldwide with the most hits coming from the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

If you have any issues you would like for me to address in a future President's Corner, please email and let me know (nancy@ubpn.org). My intention is to communicate with you through this column on a monthly basis.

Best wishes,

Nancy Birk, President
UBPN, Inc.

---

April 2003 | June 2003