On Saturday 17th March 2007, CYMnet webmasters and branch representatives from around Australia came to Canberra for the National CYMnet Webmaster’s and Representative’s Conference, which was held at the St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Catholic Church Parish Hall. The participants were from the CYM branches in Sydney, Melbourne, Geelong, Perth and Canberra-Queanbeyan.

Fr. Oleh Stefanyshyn opened the weekend with a prayer and a warm welcome to the interstate people who had made the journey to the nation’s capital for its first ever CYMnet conference. He also hoped that we would broaden our understanding of CYMnet and learn many new things which we would take back and pass on in our own branches. Acting President of the Canberra-Queanbeyan branch, Mr. Danny Kozak, also welcomed all participants to Canberra stating how exciting and important it was for national conferences to occur in their branch, which is currently renewing its membership base.

We were given folders containing updated materials about CYMnet which I refer to as - the ‘Bible’. Everything was there to make our web pages even more exciting and, for those of us new to CYMnet, there was enough information there to keep us learning for years!

In the first session of the conference, National CYMnet Representative Stepan Duma told us what was in our CYMnet bibles and how we could use all the included materials. He spoke of CYMnet’s history, who is involved in CYMnet nationally and internationally, whilst also giving a general overview of what CYMnet offers. We then loaded programs onto our laptops from the CDs that we were given, in order for us to be prepared to play around with coding in the sessions that followed.

Justin Senko presented the latest software programs that are available to edit images and also the ins and outs of buying these particular programs. It opened our eyes to how much it costs to have the right software to be able to achieve the desired outcome.

At the end of the first day we headed to Black Mountain Peninsula where the Canberra-Queanbeyan CYM branch had organised a fantastic BBQ with members of the Canberra-Queanbeyan Ukrainian community. Upon arrival of the food, cooked by the fantastic chefs, we were greeted by a family of hungry ducks wanting some food so badly that they stole some food from people’s plates.

The Sunday began with a short session about how CYMnet can be used as an educational tool in CYM, and also how to prepare materials for inclusion in the Electronic Library to make it an available resource worldwide. This session was followed by a mass commemorating the first anniversary of Canberra-Queanbeyan CYM branch ex-President Michael Olijnyk’s passing. After mass a lunch was put on by the church, following which Justin Senko continued his presentation on graphics – the last session of the conference.

To close the conference the President of the National Executive of the UYA, Mr. Wasyl Senko encouraged all attendees to put into practice the wealth of knowledge they had acquired over the weekend to ensure the UYA branch websites were constantly updated with news and events. Mr. Stepan Duma then officially closed the conference by thanking all participants for taking part and also thanking the UYA board in Canberra-Queanbeyan for all their help in ensuring the conference would be a success. Mrs. Halya Olijnyk kindly invited all conference attendees to her residence for a BBQ, fittingly winding down the weekend.

Overall it was a great weekend! I learnt things about HTML coding and CYMnet I never knew before. With the knowledge that I have learnt, Natalka Lutak and I can build Canberra-Queanbeyan’s first ever CYMnet page.

Many thanks go to Stepan Duma for organising the conference and for his presentations, to Justin Senko for his creative graphics presentations, and to all the participants who gave their time to travel to Canberra to attend the conference. Thanks also go to Messers Danny Kozak and Peter Lutak for their help in the organisation of the conference.