MEDIA RELEASE – April 27, 2009

If you want to be notified about community events happening in Ridgetown, Dresden, Tilbury or any other community in Chatham-Kent, you can now be informed by e-mail by the municipality. The free e-mail service is a feature of the new and improved Chatham-Kent Event Calendar at www.chatham-kent.ca/calendar

In addition to the email notification feature, community web sites can now link to a calendar of events for their specific community.

“The Chatham-Kent Event Calendar already provides residents with a centralized, searchable listing of events taking place across Chatham-Kent,” said Director of Information Technology Services Helen McLaren. “The new features make this information even more accessible and, if you wish, you can focus your attention on events happening in your local community.”

“The events calendar assists citizens who want to be active members of their community,” said Chief Administrator Rob Browning. “It is one of a growing number of customer services that the municipality has developed on the Internet, services that support our telephone and personal services. The new features are an exciting development.”

The Chatham-Kent Event Calendar now includes four new tools:

• Users are able to ‘subscribe’ and receive e-mail notices of events based on community or category. Users must subscribe to the service first and provide a valid e-mail address. The event e-mail will contain all of the event details and a link to the Chatham-Kent Events Calendar, as well as a link to unsubscribe to the service. To subscribe to the Chatham-Kent Event Calendar, go to www.chatham-kent.ca and select ‘Subscription Service’ from the e-service drop-down list.
• Users now have the ability to filter the calendar view by community, category or keyword. Users are able to select their community from a drop down list and view only the events within this community, category or keyword.
• The ability to provide link to a view of the Chatham-Kent Event Calendar has been added. Users will be able to add a link from their website to the entire calendar or add a link to a specific view of the calendar based on community, category or keyword.
• The Chatham-Kent Event Calendar can now be ‘crawled’ by internet search engines. This will ensure that event information is easier to find.

The Chatham-Kent Event Calendar can be accessed through the Chatham-Kent Community Portal at www.chatham-kent.ca or directly at www.chatham-kent.ca/calendar. For assistance on using the calendar or these new tools, please click on ‘Help’ in the Chatham-Kent Event Calendar.

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General media contact:

Brian Worrall, Communications Officer – Chief Administrative Office, Municipality of Chatham-Kent, Civic Centre, 315 King Street West, Chatham ON N7M 5K8
Tel: 519-360-1998 x3624 E-mail: ckcommunications@chatham-kent.ca