If you missed the conference you missed a lot. As you know the founders of the Womens Friendship Network (the NFLL) decided to set up a booth at the Central California Womens Conference in Fresno in September. It was a large undertaking but it was so well worth it. We met so many women who were interested in our website either for themselves or for someone they loved. The idea of a place to go on the net for people who are looking for contact and friends appealed to many people. It was just a great experience!

Two of us attended last years conference and decided that given an opportunity we would set up a booth for our site at the next conference. Low and behold this year was the time for us. We started working on our paperwork in May and finished just before the conference date of September 14th. On Monday the 13th two of us went down to the convention center and set up our banner and table. Then we proceed to our friends house to help out with all the rest of the preparation. It was decided that in order to give women information about us we would first have to draw them to our booth. Our answer to this dilemma was cookies. To assure freshness we started baking our cookies the day before the conference and continued baking until after dark. We baked 2,000 snikerdoodles and bagged each one closing the bag with a sticker that had our website address on it. Needless to say we all went home very fatigued and sore. Starting early on Tuesday morning we headed to the convention center and set up. One of our very creative members suggested using turkey roasting units to warm the cookies. What a stroke of genius. Not only did we have great cookies but we also served them warm. The positive comments were amazing – plus everyone remembers snikerdoodles as a childhood favorite. We were able to answer questions and receive suggestions from hundreds of women. It was such a positive day.

We broke for lunch and joined the other 3200 women in the center who enjoyed a great pasta and chicken lunch and then heard Marie Osmond speak. She was very positive and very uplifting. It was the first time she talked about her sons death. She talked about a women’s heart and how that can see and understand. She was quite inspiring and funny at the same time.

We returned to our booth to finish off the afternoon thinking that we would have plenty of cookies left. Well, we not only ran out of cookies by 3PM but we also ran out of brochures and other handouts we had produced for the occasion. We raffled off one dozen cookies for those who had placed their names in our drawing and at 4PM we closed up shop and went home.

That evening we all enjoyed a very large pizza at my house and rethought the day and all its implications for us.

Some of the most commonly asked questions from women at the conference were:

Is my mother too old to sign up?
Absolutely not, any age woman can use the website.

What age women would use this site?
Basically any age – as above an older woman who may be forced to stay at home - a younger woman who is new in town, a caregiver of any age who finds it difficult to get out at times, a young mother who has little ones at home – any woman with a sincere desire to make friends can use the site.

Is it difficult to use the website?
Our site is set up to have simple access for those who may not have extensive website skills. Follow the prompts and anyone should be able to use the site.

What if my mother doesn’t speak English?
While our website is not set up to deal with other languages by opening an account and declaring your desire to communicate in another language you could uncover many other women who wish to get in touch with you. Give it a try!

This site didn’t cost me anything to sign on – how come??
We provide a free service to those women who choose to sign up. Our goal is to help relieve loneliness and provide an outlet for women everywhere who wish to widen their world. In the future if advertisers see an outlet on our site we will have to evaluate the benefits of each one. Presently we sell no products and do not solicit any advertisers. We will not allow any people who signs up to deal in any selling either. If you should come across any member who is selling a product please just press ‘report this as offensive’ and their name will be removed from our list.

We had a great time at the conference and we hope to repeat the process again in the future. Have a fun Halloween ! Many blessings to all - Shortwave