Meeting Minutes

Tags:

Here are the following meeting minutes. Please scroll down to see all the minutes from previous meetings.

Monday March 2, 2009

Attendees: Don Jamie, Don Oren, Don Mark, Don Libby
Had a few microphone issues, but overall DimDim was capable of meeting our needs for teleconferencing with audio / video.
Don Jamie lead a review of the current state of the development site: burnon.idealienstudios.com The general concensus was that CMS admin is strong and design is at a "good enough" spot to start making content an active need.
Don Oren agreed to present the request to community at the next town hall possibly with a demonstration or video of use if time available
Recognizing that people will generally be more responsive to provide content if they can see where it will be going, the recommendation was to share the burnon.idealienstudios.com link with a few caveats that we know it is "rough around the edges".
An on-going recommendation was made to revisit the state of development on a monthly basis to evaluate what are outstanding areas that would prevent go-live.
Some discussion took place about moving the site over to the burnon.ca site when it is closer to beta state, but still allowing the current site to resolve as the primary. However since we were fairly certain at the outset that any change to burnon.ca should be accompanied by a server / hosting provider switch, that might not be a viable option.
Don Oren took notes about content areas requiring input which he will present as part of the details at the town hall. I mentioned Don Kerry had agreed to be head content editor / wrangler. Perhaps you two can sync up to discuss how you'd like to co-ordinate that.

Areas where content is needed are the homepage with background and photo, the about page with history and sidebar content adjustment, regional pages need updating and events content.
We were not going to concern ourselves with the photos and eventually migrate the old photos.burnon.ca site.

Proper training materials for how to maintain the full site will be produced once we have productionalized it. In the meantime I'm content to be the go-to for putting content into the site if necessary. In the interim, I'm willing to train / help anyone who wants to learn to use Wordpress for the purpose of Burnon.ca maintenance, with the caveat that until we have the content flushed out a little more there may be some variety in how that content management process takes place. As such, I'd like to keep the list of those who access the admin to those who are not afraid of technology or using things in an unpolished state.
On a whim I decided to try and install the Wordpress forum plugin software (Simple:Press). IT FRIKKIN' ROCKS! You can check it out at
http://burnon.idealienstudios.com/forum It has internal messaging, profiles, rss at any/every level, configurable control over which groups / forums are readable by guests, permalinks to posts, buddy lists and probably more that I haven't discovered. One of the best
things about it for me is that if you create a Wordpress user it replicates over to the forum system. So this could be a big way to
drive new users to sign-up to the site. Check it out at http://burnon.idealienstudios.com/forum

Monday February 2, 2009

Discussion of layout and design
Group decided that the silouhette with the landscape background or mountain range is nice
Prefer simple header and simple logo and monochromatic - simplify the current BurnOn moose logo
Size of the logo should be small as done in the current mockup by Tall Tom
The website needs to be centered
"Burn" and "ON" should be distinct fonts
A showcase/caroselle displaying various events or pictures from the gallery should be on the home page as seen in the Revolution theme
The search bar needs to move but this is low priority
From the Revolution Theme - the two column content in the middle should be one column
Regionalization should be one dropdown menu and the landing page for each page should have the distinct areas for each link
The contact us field in the right column should move to the Contact Us page
We need to consider a forum type discussion board
the HOME button should be removed
The navigation bar buttons are: (not necessarily in this order)

Photos
Contact us
regional
resources
Links
Events

Naviational Bar should have increased button size with labels that light up on mouseover
Another option for the Nav bar is the "Sliding Door" WP theme nav bar but half the size. Various images were discussed as the option of the nav bar
Remove "events" from the right top column
Maximum five items on the main page including showcase, news, events
Small description of the site should appear under the showcase/caroselle
The contact us page will contain all the information needed to join the Google/Yahoo groups
Tunde agreed to work on the visual element from the PSD and convert to HTML with help from Draw
Other functionality/custom components will be completed by other members after the main theme is built.

Monday January 5. 2009

Discussion of future events -

DON organizes a tutorial event "drink and learn" -
Organize something to bring to MVAB or recomps.
Ability for community upload a video or photos with the goal show these at events such as MVAB

Plugins discussed

RSS functionality must be ensured for GigPress
Various levels of authority functionality is presented.

Wiki tutorial will be posted this week
DON Facebook group will created but will be outward messaging only

members will not be part of DON but will hear of our announcements

DON will create a separate Communications and IM/IT teams in semantic terms only

Tom and Oren agreed to be part of Communications team.

Move towards making our emails less ascii and more HTML/graphic

Create proper branding for BurnT and DON
Create standards and templates for all special interest group
Ensure that the 'fancy' emails are stripped of their fanciness to also have a plain text version

Don Marty mentioned that he may buy dreamhosting hosting to migrate the old site to this new hosting
Jamie discussed the main elements of the site and discuss layout/functionality
Most important need is design.
Themes and site:

We discuss navigation bar layout. Top navigation has some preference but side navigation has more space. We need more investigation of options.
Top level navigation will always stay even with scrolling
3 column - 2 column based on content and last column non-content based (such as with widget)
not-fixed width size and should be elastic (%margins or maximum width) Widget boxes can fall into two boxes.
light background is preferred
we should be able to separate theme from layout so that we can have different themes based on certain times (such as during the burn or Channukah)
We should meet high standards such as blind standards and W3C. We should meet at least the first level at the W3C site.
End of the month should have all standards set out and have some design prepared.

Discussion of private/public photos.
Messaging for next Town Hall

Discuss IM/IT & Communications team
Discuss FB group
Discuss Wiki Tutorial
Discuss designer needs
Discuss of special interest group emails and content
More girls

Next Steps

Jamie will continue with building the backend
We will all continue to look at standards and layout needs for the designer
Produce some examples of themes that we will need.

Friday October 10, 2008

Core Concepts for the hare track implementation
Justification of selection of Wordpress as a platform
Functional Requirements for hare track
Tentative Implementation Timeline - January 19, 2008
Overview of process, roles & deliverables

0 Comments Show recent to old