Hi Chris et al,<br><br>I'm happy to hear that we're working on revising the website. I was going to snoop around town to find somebody willing to donate that service to us. I really want to be a part of this conversation, but I occupied Tuesdays at that time. So here are my thoughts:<br>
<ul><li>I think that the our relationship to the IndyMedia "movement" (or what is left of it) is overstated by our website, which currently functions as (essentially) a leftist news feed, with some sub-pages about the rest of our work. I think any organization's website needs to <i>reflect</i> the work done by the organization; right now, the website is itself one of our projects, i.e. a news feed. When I tell someone I work at the IMC and send the website to them, they have no clue that we run a diverse 30,000 sq. ft. Community Media & Arts Center.</li>
<li>I would personally advocate making what is now our main interface (i.e. [again] news feed) a separate sub-page, and have the new main interface represent our various projects. Our news feed is <i>not </i>more important than, say, Books to Prisoners, or our tech work, or ODDmusic.</li>
<li>We're a <i>colorful </i>organization. We need <i>color</i>. Maybe some photos of kids making art or something, but definitely not the dreary aesthetic of the 1990s IMC movement.<br></li></ul>What do you think? Does that make sense?<br>
<br>Thanks,<br>Austin<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 1:52 PM, Chris Ritzo <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:chris.ritzo@gmail.com">chris.ritzo@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
The Tech group is moving forward with some great changes to the UCIMC website and this email is both an update and a call for contribution!<br>Please reply if you have any questions or comments.<br><b><br>Calendars, Events, etc.</b><br>
Last spring we completely re-worked our calendar of events and have just implemented some additions to the site re: calendars.<br><br><i>Separate "Community Calendar" and "UCIMC Calendar" Events<br></i><ul>
<li>With so many events happening at UCIMC, and interest in promoting other community events, we've separated our events and community events into two separate calendars.</li><li>Under the <b>Publish</b>! menu, you'll see two new menu items: <b>Submit a UCIMC Event </b>and <b>Submit a Community Event</b>. This is pretty straightforward, but basically a UCIMC Event is happening at UCIMC and a Community Event is happening somewhere else.</li>
<li>UCIMC Events are not published immediately, but are reviewed by the Shows group who confirms availability, contracts, and deposits with the requesting person or group prior to publishing.</li><li>Community Events can be published by anyone, but a CAPTCHA (those little boxes that make you type in the letters in an image..) is required before publishing.</li>
</ul><div style="margin-left: 40px;"><i>What about publishing a news story with the Date/Time of Event "scope"?</i><br><ul><li>Community Events effectively replace the way we used to submit one-off news stories with "event" information</li>
<li>The vast majority of news stories are not associated with future events, and it's advantageous to separate these events from regular news stories too.</li><ul><li>Community members can now submit an event and see it on our community calendar, and it's not lost in a list of news stories.</li>
<li>We can list "Upcoming Events" in true chronological order, provide an RSS feed of events, and in the future (next steps) bring in events from other organizations via RSS feeds, creating a robust collection of events happening in this region from a number of organizations in the community.</li>
</ul></ul></div><ul><li>Lastly, the <b>Upcoming Events</b> on the top of the front page, and in the right sidebar on interior pages, <b><i>now lists <u>both</u> upcoming UCIMC events and Community Events in chronological order.</i></b></li>
</ul><b>Site redesign</b><br>We're getting ready to start a new theme design for the UCIMC.org site. If you have input into this, reply to this email or come to a tech group meeting, Tuesdays at 6pm.<br>
<br>_______________________________________________<br>
IMC mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:IMC@lists.chambana.net">IMC@lists.chambana.net</a><br>
<a href="http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/imc" target="_blank">http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/imc</a><br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Austin McCann, Development Adviser<br>Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center<br>
<a href="http://www.digitalartscorps.org" target="_blank">Digital Arts Service Corps</a><br>202 S. Broadway Ave.<br>Urbana, IL 61801<br>austinmccann[at]ucimc[dot]org<br><br>