Wellesley NRC wants you to see the light at workshop
Blood Drive at Wellesley Community Center, Aug. 31
An American Red Cross blood drive will be held at Wellesley Community Center (219 Washington St.) on Aug. 31 from 11am-4pm, with the goal of collecting at least 50 units of blood. Wellesley Dental Group and the Wellesley Community Center are hosting the event.
Members of the public are encouraged to attend. Donors with the following blood types are invited to donate by the Red Cross’ double red cell technology (2RBC): O- , O+, A- , B-. There are height and weight requirements, more information is available here. Prospective donors can also pre-register by visiting The Red Cross.
Donors can also complete pre-reading and health history questions online at Red Cross RapidPass and print out the form on the day of the blood drive. Please bring picture identification and remember to eat a healthy meal and drink plenty of fluids before donating.
For more information, contact: [email protected], (781) 237-9071
Wellesley contact sharing firm moving into former Turnabout Shoppe building
KeynectUp, a Wellesley company that provides colleges and other organizations with an easy way to share contact and other important information with members of their communities, plans to move into the space at 30 Grove St. where the Turnabout Shoppe resided for 25 years. And yes, the black horse in front is staying…
“It’ll be our mascot,” says Kevin McDonald, a Wellesley resident and co-founder of KeynectUp, a company we wrote about last year because its technology was being used by the Wellesley Police Department to support Boston Marathon safety.
KeynectUp, which plans to move from its current location at 568 Washington St. in September or October, has been growing fast, doubling its sales staff and expanding beyond just a handful of school customers — including Babson and Wellesley College — to more than 70 now. It also serves non-school clients.
The technology, which is not an app, allows organizations such as schools to deliver key contact information, such as campus police and suicide hotline numbers, onto mobile devices. Some schools use KeynectUp’s virtual contact card technology to help them and families stay in touch wth students studying abroad, including when threatening situations arise.
While the company doesn’t market its technology to consumers, you can test it on KeynectUp’s website. And McDonald says KeynectUp will provide signage in front of its new home that will invite passersby to give the technology a try, just so they have an idea of what the heck this business does.
McDonald figures 10 to 12 people could occupy its new office, which is being spiffed up. The inside is being painted, the front porch is being renovated and a new fence is being installed. “We hope this will revitalize that corner a bit,” he says.
Wellesley makes sense as a home for the business since McDonald and another of KeynectUp’s founders live here, and other employees find taking the commuter rail into Wellesley to be convenient. McDonald also says KeynectUp is a tester of Wellesley’s 1 gigabit Internet service, which is an attractive reason to do business here.
One new challenge for KeynectUp’s employees, who now work above Tutto Italiano and its tempting foods, is that they will be located across from Truly Yogurt, which McDonald says he already frequents.
Look for KeynectUp to have a formal opening ceremony in the months to come.
MORE: Here’s what that huge SOLD sign on Wellesley Square’s Stuart Swan building is all about
Wellesley ramping up new, user-friendly Town website
The Town of Wellesley is debuting a new Town website (www.wellesleyma.gov) in the coming weeks. Wellesley has partnered with CivicPlus to bring a fresh new look and user-friendly design to the site, which will be live by August 7. CivicPlus has built more than 2000 government websites across the country, including many recent winners of the MA Municipal Association’s annual website awards.
During the past nine months, a representative working group of Town managers researched current municipal website best practices and listened to feedback from public meetings on the Unified Plan. The group analyzed statistics on hits, searches, and downloads from our current Town website, and worked with the team at CivicPlus to build a site that is expected to be much easier to use and more intuitive to navigate. More specifically, the new site:
- Provides quick access to the most frequently requested services and information
- Aggregates agendas / minutes for most Town Boards and Committees on a single page
- Is built with a mobile-friendly responsive design
- Offers a personalized user experience, allowing you to create an account and engage only in information you care about
What you need to know…
- The Town’s main web address (www.wellesleyma.gov) will not change, but you may need to update existing bookmarks to interior pages in your browser’s settings.
- If you are a current subscriber to one of our website’s active news lists (www.wellesleyma.gov/
subscriber), we suggest that you set your spam blocker to allow for mail from [email protected]. Once the new site goes “live”, we encourage you to create an account and explore the wider variety of available subscription options. - Departmental mailing lists (maintained by the NRC, COA, and others) will migrate to the CivicPlus platform over the next few months. Current subscribers to these lists will be contacted separately with specifics.
- Emergency, traffic, and utility alerts will continue to be sent separately by the Wellesley Police Department, and you can sign up for these at www.wellesleypolice.com.
A “refreshed” website is an important step in the Town’s efforts to deliver the best available online municipal services and to increase transparency. Coming soon in FY18, Town managers will work with State officials to develop a Citizen Engagement Communications Plan, and will explore options to support online permit and license applications.
For questions or concerns about the new website, or to suggest new online features or functionality, please contact the Town of Wellesley Information Technology department at [email protected].
Wellesley Girls Who Code connect with Canadian Prime Minister
The Wellesley chapter of Girls Who Code attended a hackathon at the Providence Convention Center on July 14 and attracted some interest from attendees of the National Governors’ Association meeting that was taking place at the same time. Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took the time to learn about the Girls Who Code projects and provided a photo opp as well.
Local club members who attended were: Rachel White; Jade Mei Foland; Adhvika Arunkumar; Sarah Hatch; and Ruari Sadasiv.
(Info shared by Lakshmi Sadasiv)