New JTM home
Steve Hanson
building a platform that could combine the various pieces of JTM
internet presence in one place. In a moment of weakness I volunteered
to head up such an effort, building a new JTM platform on Drupal. One
of the first pieces of work to go into that will be to build a
directory of JTM-related web sites.
Now - at the moment I'm pretty swamped with both paid and pro-bono
work, so I'm sending out a shout for some help on this. Help in this
sense ranges from ideas about things it would be mondo-cool to do in
the new web site, to helping with design and graphic elements, to
people who might be able to at some point knock out a Drupal module or
2. I'm working (slowly) on building up an initial test site. More
on that in a few days.
SO - please let me know if you're interested in pitching in, and what
you'd like to pitch ---
Maurreen Skowran
pages. It might be cool to have a "random page" function.
Some one on the call suggested something like a rotating "site of the
day."
Maurreen Skowran
housekeeping. That might be wiki-like.
Barry Parr
wind up with the same kind of organizational mess (too many places to
look for what you need, no good way to find updates) all massed under
a single domain. Right now, I can't keep track of JTM. Simplification
would also expedite delivery of the integrated site.
My preference would be for a group blog. It's a format we all know
inside out, it works just fine for a myriad of applications, it allows
for a single searchable database, a single RSS feed, it's news and
discussion (not reference oriented) it's mature, and it's flexible
enough. We should resist the urge to layer on wikis and discussion
forums and god knows what else. The goal should be communication, and
not experimentation.
Sorry if that seems boring.
bp
Barry Parr
http://coastsider.com
Maurreen Skowran
It seems like blogs take more effort and are less open and flexible.
The Google group is at least serving the same purpose as a discussion
board. Anyone of us at any time can contribute information or ask a
question. We don't have to wait for something to be addressed by one
of the chosen who would be writing blog posts. We don't have to
compose more than a sentence.
If the goal is to support each other, a forum seems like the simplest
way to do so.
BUT -- If Steve still has the time and inclination to build the site,
I support letting him do whatever he wants. I figure that people who
are doing the work (especially for free) have earned the right to make
decisions.
David Cohn
You can give access to anyone to blog: So essentially a new blog post can act like a forum post: except it's a better marketing tool, as it would interact (in theory) with the rest of the blogosphere, bringing more people into the JTM-sphere.
But I do agree with Maurreen - in the end it's really up to Steve.
My 2 cents: Let Steve do what he wants, taking in the over-abundance of information that has already been provided.
As long as it's a strong and stable foundation - we can build around it reacting to what we discover our needs to be.
But we could spend the next 6 months theorizing about those needs. Let's just start small and simple.
David
Tish Grier
Blogs are more easily searchable, and taggable, than forums. They also become places where one blog can link to another, thus creating not just goodwill among bloggers, but also page rank. They increase conversation among a variety of sites across the internet.
I also agree w/David to let Steve decide, since he's the one putting this together.
T.
--- On Wed, 9/24/08, David Cohn <dco...@gmail.com> wrote:
Steve Hanson
> Good point about a Drupal-based blog. It's also easier to give individuals permission to blog on it, and there is also a module for a separate discussion board.
>
in particular, blogs and forums are really not that different from each
other -- And I usually find that people don't really want to use the
forum software because it doesn't really offer anything much that the
blogging software doesn't. There are a lot of options that aren't even
being talked about here, so I think we should just start out with a
fairly simple site and move forward from there. What I envision at the
moment is starting with a fairly straightforward site and then perhaps
branching out in an organic manner.
There's a small demo site up at the moment, but it's not accessible by
other people in a working fashion till there is a DNS record pointing to
it, and I don't control JTM's DNS, so it's waiting on that at the moment.
I do have a question at the moment -- what would we like to know about:
a. The people who will sign up for accounts on the site (JTM members,
other interested parties).
b. Their sites.
Maurreen Skowran
On Sep 24, 9:53 am, Steve Hanson <shan...@cruiskeenconsulting.com>
wrote:
> ...
Steve Hanson
> Would there be any accounts by people who aren't JTM members?
>
Tish Grier
Tish
--- On Wed, 9/24/08, Steve Hanson <sha...@cruiskeenconsulting.com> wrote:
> From: Steve Hanson <sha...@cruiskeenconsulting.com>
> Subject: {JTM} Re: New JTM home
> To: "Maurreen Skowran" <maurree...@yahoo.com>
> Cc: "Journalism That Matters" <jtm...@googlegroups.com>
Steve Hanson
> I believe, though, the agreement for the time is that it will be JTM alumni only, in order to grow a strong community among that group.
>
>
Steve Hanson
> I believe, though, the agreement for the time is that it will be JTM alumni only, in order to grow a strong community among that group.
>
More importantly -- isn't that sort of a "let's not let the community
grow" sort of viewpoint?
Bill Densmore
JTMers:
Before going to lurking status, let me try to propose consensus on what to
do next:
1) Steve Hanson takes as much responsibility as he wants to get a
Drupal-based consolidated website going. Key modules to include will be
blog for indvidual members, open registration for JTM/MGP event alumni,
with approval by an administrator before they can post, and some method
for forms-based member submission of site profile data. Other bells and
whistles as determined by Steve based on reading of the community's
requirements and requests.
2) We park the idea of a consolidated database for **all** local online
news/community sites as we have learned that J-Lab has a pretty
comprehensive list and it appears there is collaboration ongoing to make
it (and others) more coordinated and more extensive/extendable. Our focus
is on JTM alums.
3) As Maureen has done, folks volunteer as they see fit to Steve and to
the group (via this Google Group) their role; we can see in a month or so
how that is coming together.
4) We're still going to do Tuesday's phone call (Jan and Maureen have
bowed out) just to see what useful exchange surfaces. Those on the call
can manage that on the fly.
My thoughts about database fields:
FOR MEMBER REGISTRATION:
name, physical address (optional), city/state zip, owner(s),site name and
url, contact email (very important, but perhaps convert it to image so it
can't be scraped), contact phone, mission / purpose of site, what or where
covered, type of CMS, accept ads? pricing and submission guidelines? Pay
free-lancers? profit or non-profit? any affiliations? particular expertise
available to community? particular needs sought from community.
FOR SITE LISTINGS
While I don't think we should seek database entries for non-member sites
actively, (because it appears J-Lab and Placeblogger are working this and
will do so in a more coordinated fashion with others over time), we might
allow non-member site submissions so that we can review them and make them
provisional members of the JTM alumni body pending their attendance at an
event. Also, we might all find out about sites and valuable collaborations
we don't know about otherwise.
I'm going to start lurking now for a couple of weeks to see how this all
develops!
-- bill
-------------------------------------
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The Media Giraffe Project
Journalism Program
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Tish Grier
--- On Wed, 9/24/08, Steve Hanson <sha...@cruiskeenconsulting.com> wrote:
> >
>
> More importantly -- isn't that sort of a
> "let's not let the community
> grow" sort of viewpoint?
The original plan was for this to be JTM-centered. If the goal is now to use this to promote JTM, and to bring others into it, that's a different goal. It depends on who you want your community to be.
T.
Tish Grier
--- On Wed, 9/24/08, Steve Hanson <sha...@cruiskeenconsulting.com> wrote:
> >
> so --- how do we know who that is?
If we are only going to grow a JTM community, we still have to invite/notify the attendees of the other JTM events. So far, we have only invited those from Minneapolis and Silicon Valley. There are a whole bunch of other people, many of them community site developers/maintainers who are alumni of other JTM meetings that don't even know about this list.
So, we should have a strategy that invites all JTM alumni into this list, then into the site to contribute.
We will then invite alumni from the next JTM events. There is one at Temple U. in Philadelphia in October.
After this, then we may want to think about extending/growing the community beyond JTM. Or, if people find the JTM site, and want to be part of it, we should think of allowing that.
Tish
Maurreen Skowran
Change physical address to mailing adress.
Also, keep in mind that each member might not have a site, some
members might have multiple sites or projects, and each site or
porject might not be a local news site.
How to make all that mesh together, I'm not sure. Maybe for the time
being, just ask for an optional URL instead of a bunch of site
details.
Food for thought, just thinking out loud: Maybe general info such as
names and project basics could be readable by anyone, and some details
would be readable by only members.
As far as knowing who JTM alumni are, Bill probably has that info.
Possibly an invitation could be automated for them.
Steve Hanson
I think that people need to keep in mind that --
a. Having a login on the site means that they have a login on the site
- it doesn't need to mean anything more than that, and the fact that we
ask them to tell us a little about themselves. Doesn't need to mean
they can post, edit, or do anything else. It's a good way to find out
about people who are interested. I'm a community builder at heart, and
if the plan here isn't to build and extend community, then I'm the wrong
person for this. Really.
b. There needs to be a process for people to obtain an account and to
ask them about themselves. I don't think we have a good way of
pre-determining who is a JTM alum and keeping everyone else from
creating an account. We especially don't have a good way of
pre-determining that in a way that will be effective other than to keep
people from signing up.
So -- I think what we need to do here is to let people create accounts,
(there are currently several roles in the devel version) and then give
people appropriate privileges depending on who they are -- all of which
we're going to have to determine as things go on.
But mechanically I don't see any reasonable way to say "you can only get
an account if you're an alum" because that's really difficult to determine.
Please - everyone - can you cut me a little slack here - I do this sort
of thing all the time. Everyone has different ideas about what should
happen, and I don't think they can all be accommodated at this point. If
we keep putting in lots of rules and barriers that will keep us from
even building a first cut at things, we'll never be able to even get
started. And, not to put too fine of a point on it --- I'm volunteering
time that I really don't have to work on a project with no funding. If
someone else wants to be driving the process that's okay -- but can we
please just get started on this and work out the details as we go along?
My point here is that if we have to build a process to "pre-qualify" who
can sign up on the site --- it'll just create a frustrating quagmire for
everyone. Especially me.
