I just received confirmation from the hotel. Our first organizational meeting of the brand new Association of Retired English Speaking Expatriates in Panama (ARESEP) will be this Thursday, 30 July 2009, at 5:30 pm, in the new Toscana Inn Hotel in El Cangrejo. This hotel is located on D Street in El Cangrejo. From Via Espaņa in Panama City, turn right onto Via Veneto. Turn right at the Manolo's Restaurant located in front of the Veneto Hotel (turn to the right, right before the restaurant, this is "D" street in El Cangrejo.) The hotel is located almost all the way at the end of this block on the left-hand side. It would be best to park along the street somewhere and walk to the end of the block to the hotel. Rogelio Arosemena, the hotel manager, has graciously donated their meeting room for our use (free) for two hours. I'll see you there.

Please vote for your favorite.

ARESEP Logo 1

ARESEP Logo 2

Please create an account, register, and log in - in order to be able to vote in the test election.

Most likely the organization will be using this system in that configuration anyway, so it makes the most sense to just start doing it from day one.

Since this website is going to be used by an organization that will need to conduct frequent voting to determine the wants and desires of its membership, and since many of the members reside in places geographically removed from Panama City such as Bocas del Toro, Boquete, Volcan, Altos del Maria (ADM), or the beaches, we will be needing a safe and secure system to do online polling and votes. As a test of this system I have put up a quick poll - asking members to vote for the new President of ARESEP, with some famous potential candidates. Take the time to vote for one. Also, there are buttons I can click so that only registered members can vote. I have not done that with this poll because so far, ARESEP doesn't exist and no one has signed up to be a member yet. If you want you can go ahead and register as a user on this website now. Eventually you will need to be a registered user in order to be allowed to vote. When you register please include your real name and email address, which is how we will probably end up keeping track of membership. You can select any user name you like.

With a brand new website there's a lot of little admin stuff I have to do, most of which I will get to over time. For now, the site is running fine. If anyone has any ideas for added functionality let me know.

There's a healthy discussion going on over at our associated Yahoo email group - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ARESEP/. Mostly about ideas and concepts on how this organization might be put together, potential utility and functions, ideas about online voting, participation of pockets of expats who live in remote areas and far away from Panama City, etc.

Hey, the more the merrier. Right now I think we should have a first working group meeting sometime next week, just to get the ball rolling.

I just got this site running this evening. This will eventually turn into the website for the newly created Association of Retired English Speaking Expatriates in Panama (ARESEP).