An extraordinary devotion to ensuring the Isolated Children's Parents' Association maintains a digital presence saw Northern Territory member Sue Shotton awarded life membership on Wednesday.
Federal councillor Nikki McQueen told the rural lobby group's 50th annual conference at Longreach that the federal web manager had been instrumental in the establishment of two ICPA websites, starting both from scratch, since retiring from federal council in 2014.
She also assisted with the development of an online membership system beginning in 2017, keeping up the database, and maintaining the database to ensure that up to date information was available at all times.
"In addition to her website role, Sue also supports federal ICPA by attending federal conferences as the AV assistant, setting up AV assistance for presentations, motions and portfolio reports, and assisting the AV person with the numerous PowerPoint presentations, slides, videos and other technological wonders that helps make federal conference more engaging," Ms McQueen said.
Continuing with the many contributions Ms Shotton made were the establishment and maintenance of email addresses and mailboxes, organising hosting and diverting of emails, to ensure that the correct ICPA email gets to the right person.
"This is an onerous task and one that has to be done correctly, every time," Ms McQueen said.
When the former website hosting company announced in 2019 that its editing program had become obsolete, and it was understood that due to the complex nature of the structure of seven websites within one site, the extremely large database and an online payment system that was going to take a lot of mapping, not just anyone could do the job.
"In true Sue style as our web manager, she took the job of investigating a new website developer on with gusto and after discussions with federal council, she began researching into who we could entrust with such a task.
"Sue narrowed her list down and presented prospective website companies to federal and state ICPA councils at the beginning of March 2020, as COVID hit.
"In an organisation of volunteers who have businesses and families to maintain, with children to educate along with ICPA demands, as the world was flipped on its head, the timing was not ideal."
However, a company was engaged and as Ms McQueen said, Ms Shotton's depth of knowledge enabled the process to happen smoothly.
"Sue, this federal life membership is in part because this project would not have even begun without your expertise," she said. "ICPA state and federal councils would not be in the favourable position that we are currently in with a state of the art, cohesive website for our members to enjoy for many years to come."
Ms Shotton also served on ICPA's federal council for six years, from 2008 until 2014, and held the position of treasurer for two years.
She said she felt very humbled by the award.
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