emerge - next steps and notes from Saturday mtg
Reed Wade
I kept thinking I'd get more than 2 minutes to rub together usefully
(no idea why that would ever change) but, so, finally, some outcomes
and report from the Saturday meeting:
--
- it turns out that 5pm on a Saturday at a bar is a silly place to try
to have a useful discussion; we probably should have spotted that
ahead of time (though I am all for repeating that so long as we don't
actually need a result--was fun)
- Steph reported that she reviewed the IA with Emerge and the outcome
was general approval with maybe some minor wording changes, so we're
clear to proceed there
- We're now ready for the dev people to proceed with standing up a
test CMS and loading the site structure up so there's something to
poke at. Tim, are you going to be leading that effort?
- Julie will be leading the design effort
- We were joined by Julius Serrano who is going to be our screen
reader expert. We will need to let him know once we have a starting
site so he can give it a test and suggest what changes would make
sense. (so, near future action item there for dev people)
--
- Chrissy Butler joined us to describe how we might be able to help
her out (see http://idaproject.wordpress.com/ and
http://www.youtube.com/user/BLENNZ1 )
- the outcome of that discussion was the idea for a mailing list where
people like her could go to get technical advice; she is learning a
lot about how to drive wordpress but there's time when she could use a
technology best friend; I'm inclined to suggest that she and others
just join the main mailing list and then just start asking questions
instead of having a separate list. Any thoughts on that?
--
Other attendees, please fill in the gaps. I'm sure I've left out
something important.
--
Also, I've put a copy of the AI on the Teambox project site (
http://teambox.com/projects/emerge/pages/12160 )
If you're not hooked up with Teambox yet, try the link above. It
should ask you to set up an account, you'll then need Tim or I to add
you to the project.
-reed
Reed Wade
- we now have a technical contact from Emerge who will be dealing
with hosting (and maybe other) matters; So, Tim and I and whoever will
be talking further to him. He's asking right now about platform
issues.
-reed
Steph Beath
From: Steph Beath <steph...@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 11:06 PM
Subject: Re: {Wellington IT Volunteers} emerge - next steps and notes from Saturday mtg
To: Reed Wade <re...@catalyst.net.nz>
Thanks Reed, my additions:
- Kristina is going to be leading the content redesign work. With this, the intention is that we will do the content for an area of their site to help them understand what is required with the rest of their content. Then they can do most of the work on the rest of the site.
- A reminder that Emerge's transition expo is hapoening in September and as such their advertising has already begun and they are fund raising heavily at the moment as well. Their current site has gone offline so they are keen for us to adivse them of what CMS we are going to use so they can get a holding page up in the interim. They need somewhere for prospective funders to go and check them out online. I pointed out that not having their existing website probably wasn't hurting their chances of getting funding :) but they really do need something online to prove they are a real entity asap.
- I have flicked through the homepage wireframe to Julie tonight and will be sending her the internal page one tomorrow. I'll also call Emerge to rattle up whatever soft copy branding imagery there is and get that to Julie. Then the plan is for Julie to meet with Emerge (out of hours) and talk through the ideas she has for design and hopefully by the end of next week we will have something to work on in that department as well.
It was a really good get together and I'm all for a repeat - or at least remembering to have a few quiet beverages and a chat/laugh at the end of the next meeting - even if it's an afternoon one.
Cheers, Steph
--
Information Architect/Interaction Designer
Comsen Ltd
P: 04 970 7868
M: 027 245 5859
F: 04 976 8794
Twitter/Skype: stephbeath
--
Information Architect/Interaction Designer
Comsen Ltd
P: 04 970 7868
M: 027 245 5859
F: 04 976 8794
Twitter/Skype: stephbeath
Kristina Louis
Bryony Hall
Katia Guiloff
Can do next weekend (sorry, I'm a movie freak, the festival is too much of a happy moment for me)
Katia
Kristina Louis
Bryony Hall
Steph Beath
Steph Beath
Bryony Hall
Katia Guiloff
I'm quite keen on attending a Kat's clothes swap on Sunday, but can arrive later : )
Kristina Louis
Steph Beath
Steph Beath
Katia Guiloff
hellonearthis
If it's going to be a wordpress based design, what is the easiest way
to share the site for development?
I have a wordpress install that I've been playing with, would it just
be a matter of sharing the key files, that would replace other
developer installation of wordpress.
regards
Brett
hellonearthis
im not super skilled with wordpress but know enough php that I'm am
getting there. I have not hosting and using an apache server to
'experiment locally.
I've been trying to build the basic layout as described but the site
map, some bits of the site mean major changes to the default template
of WP, ie, the landing page describes the screen being in 3 columns.
WP themes has a system of two, the main area and a column for the
widgets. So not complete sure how to do three, but i'm Googleing and
learning and might be able to work out if this can be customized. Any
WP gurus know if this will be possible or not. I'm going to be
working on that this week and should be able to let you know if it can
be done later this week.
Content; I don't know who is doing that or what will be written but
the easiest way to write and share what the content is, is to write
it in google doc's and then share those pages. Google documents for
each page of the Emerge site will let you also have basic layout
control as well as fine tuning what is written without having to use
the wordress editor and waiting for the wordpress pages to be created
for editing. Some bit's like the 3 column display could be written in
google presents (powerpoint like app), it lets you format the text in
columns, giving a representation of how the text will format on the
finished page.
I would like to know who can help with the hosting options as
development would be better on a test machine that others can work on
as well. Is that the right way to do that as I am a total amateur
that's just trying. Any feedback is welcome on this.
Reed has said that Drupal could be a more flexible and I think he
could be right, what do others think. Because of the stage this
project is at, it would not be hard to go with either WP or Drupal and
having the core documents on google it would be easy build with either
core. I think there are more Drupal gurus out there and WP gurus, so
it could be worth thinking about, maybe :) Please tell me what you
think.
regards
Brett
hellonearthis
special theme.
Steph Beath
As for the content, Kristina, Bryony and myself are working on that and due to meet again this weekend. Once we have met and shared our work with each other, we'll put it on the google group site for you. We will still need to go back to Emerge with it and get them working on the rest of the site but we'll give you what we've got done.
Julie is leading the visual design. She had hoped to meet with Susan from Emerge last weekend but I'm not sure if that meeting happened or not.
Emerge's hosting arrangement with Wellington Net (is that what it's called??) has been revived. The hoster was supposed to shut down but then it didn't and I believe it is now a viable hoster again and there should be no need to move elsewhere. I'm not sure what the arrangement is there but I suspect that we'll need to keep the dev site local to us until it's ready to launch. I don't know what to suggest for doing that I'm sorry.
Thanks again and we'll make sure we keep feeding you pieces of the puzzle as we go along.
As soon as you've got something people can look at I think it would be worthwhile sharing because you'll probably need some help making the site accessible. Obviously that's extremely important with the target market for Emerge :). We have a couple of accessibility gurus knocking about so the earlier we can involve them the better.
Cheers,
Steph Beath
Information Architect/Interaction Designer
Comsen Ltd
027 245 5859
Sent from my iPhone.
Dean
I can definitely help with the html/css side of things, and I have
experience with coding for accessibly (working in the .govt.nz space).
I don't know anything about Wordpress but we use a CMS at work am keen
to learn a new one. I haven't been in town most weekends lately which
makes meeting you all difficult (and am out of town again this
weekend!) but would still like to join in. What would be the best way
for me to get involved now, assuming I can be of use?
Cheers,
Dean
On Aug 9, 9:48 pm, Steph Beath <stephbe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Brett - wow, all sounds very tricky to me (a non-technical geek type). Thank you so much for picking up the dev work!! It's greatly appreciated.
>
> As for the content, Kristina, Bryony and myself are working on that and due to meet again this weekend. Once we have met and shared our work with each other, we'll put it on the google group site for you. We will still need to go back to Emerge with it and get them working on the rest of the site but we'll give you what we've got done.
>
> Julie is leading the visual design. She had hoped to meet with Susan from Emerge last weekend but I'm not sure if that meeting happened or not.
>
> Emerge's hosting arrangement with Wellington Net (is that what it's called??) has been revived. The hoster was supposed to shut down but then it didn't and I believe it is now a viable hoster again and there should be no need to move elsewhere. I'm not sure what the arrangement is there but I suspect that we'll need to keep the dev site local to us until it's ready to launch. I don't know what to suggest for doing that I'm sorry.
>
> Thanks again and we'll make sure we keep feeding you pieces of the puzzle as we go along.
>
> As soon as you've got something people can look at I think it would be worthwhile sharing because you'll probably need some help making the site accessible. Obviously that's extremely important with the target market for Emerge :). We have a couple of accessibility gurus knocking about so the earlier we can involve them the better.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Steph Beath
> Information Architect/Interaction Designer
> Comsen Ltd
> 027 245 5859
>
> Sent from my iPhone.
>
hellonearthis
skills.
I've found a free host and setup up a test wordpress area for others
to see where I'm at.
It's really basic at the moment as I'm still learning how to run
wordpress.
http://hellonearthis.byethost3.com/
I will be working on getting this over the week, would like to hear
from Julie about the visual design.
I am going to keep working at it to see if I can rough out something
that relate to the sitemap described on teambox.
>
> As for the content, Kristina, Bryony and myself are working on that and due to meet again this weekend. Once we have met and shared our work with each other, we'll put it on the google group site for you. We will still need to go back to Emerge with it and get them working on the rest of the site but we'll give you what we've got done.
>
> Julie is leading the visual design. She had hoped to meet with Susan from Emerge last weekend but I'm not sure if that meeting happened or not.
>
> Emerge's hosting arrangement with Wellington Net (is that what it's called??) has been revived. The hoster was supposed to shut down but then it didn't and I believe it is now a viable hoster again and there should be no need to move elsewhere. I'm not sure what the arrangement is there but I suspect that we'll need to keep the dev site local to us until it's ready to launch. I don't know what to suggest for doing that I'm sorry.
>
> Thanks again and we'll make sure we keep feeding you pieces of the puzzle as we go along.
>
> As soon as you've got something people can look at I think it would be worthwhile sharing because you'll probably need some help making the site accessible. Obviously that's extremely important with the target market for Emerge :). We have a couple of accessibility gurus knocking about so the earlier we can involve them the better.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Steph Beath
> Information Architect/Interaction Designer
> Comsen Ltd
> 027 245 5859
>
> Sent from my iPhone.
>
hellonearthis
reading a few books is getting my through the basics. I could share
the admin info with you if you want to have a look at it. Will setup
a google document with the information about that tomorrow.
Dean
The CMS we use is Interwoven Teamsite and I don't have experience with
WP so not sure how transferable my knowledge will be. In Teamsite you
can control layout completely through CSS just by editing and
publishing those files. HTML needs to be cut up and inserted into the
template system by a developer so I have a limited understanding of
that bit being a front end coder. Hopefully WP allows a similar
workflow? I had a look at the dev site, it's looking in a state where
I could help wrangling the CSS if that would be useful. You've done
well! I'll be interested to have a look at the admin info when you can
share it.
cheers,
Dean
Julius Charles Serrano
I can also help in making the site accessible and testing the pages using a
screen reader.
Thanks.
Julius
Julius Charles R. Serrano
Research Director
Even Grounds
Accessibility Consulting
E-mail: jul...@evengrounds.com, julius....@gmail.com
Phone: +6421 132-3003
http://www.evengrounds.com
Facebook: http://facebook.com/evengrounds
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dean" <dno...@gmail.com>
To: "Wellington IT Volunteers" <wellington-i...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, August 09, 2010 19:25
Subject: Re: {Wellington IT Volunteers} Re: emerge - next steps and notes
from Saturday mtg