[NCUC-EC] NCUC EC Internal appointments/roles [E-Platforms]

[William Drake]

Hi all

Thanks much for the replies, encouraging.

Pranesh,

On Jan 13, 2014, at 12:19 AM, Pranesh Prakash <pranesh at cis-india.org> wrote:

> Dear Bill,
> Thanks for this very detailed overview.
> 
> William Drake <wjdrake at gmail.com> [2014-01-07 15:51:13+0100]:
>> E-platforms.  I don’t know if any of you have technical skills do system administration or web site management yourselves, or would be willing at least to simply coordinate the efforts of the folks who do that so their time can be well managed and focused.  But absent staff support to handle such things, (which we need to apply for, and probably could get) in the near-term we have to make sure our tech is working and people who join NCUC get fully plugged in and listed.  This is our most important team, and it desperately needs a coordinator.
> 
> I could take join this.  Apart from the below, what else needs to be done?

Fabulous.  So what you and Stefania should do is sign up to the e-team list (I suppose Joly would be the one to approve you, not sure), have a look at the archive of recent messages, and as mentioned, as a first step maybe pull all Tapani’s “here’s what needs to be done” messages from December into one formatted document that can be referenced going forward.  Then try to get clear who’s accepting to be responsible for which pieces.  If I recall correctly, it’s been pretty much Joly, Brenden and David who’ve stepped forward to do stuff, but none has actually said “yes, I will take ownership of xyz responsibility.”  Roy is also there, and while focused mostly on the archive project, I’m guessing would probably help with some things as needed.

Another immediate priority is to ascertain whether the last group of new members was added to the data base and website listing, and to make sure this happens with future intakes.  Brenden said he added them to ncuc-discuss but if memory serves also said he didn’t know what to do about the other step.

Beyond making sure the trains run (on time would be even better), basically to be clearer about what I was saying last night to Stefania: It’d be nice if the e-team would really just take ownership of the website.  It’s our face to the world, and it’s largely unattended now.  It’s been rebuilt and looks nicer than the old ning thanks to Wilson and Sarah’s efforts, but it’s missing lots of info (including some stuff that was on the ning but didn’t get transferred over) and needs to be tended and updated from a content standpoint.  In the e-team archive you’ll find a number of long messages from Tapani and I laying out what’s missing and needs to be done.  The volume of mail exchanged was not overwhelming so a quick scan of the archive wouldn’t take long.

Since I’m slow witted and never learned site management, I don’t quite know if it’s possible, but I would think it’d be good to have some password protected workspaces where e.g. the EC can store documents listing ongoing work streams, who’s doing what, all our internal management crud.  Of course, if it’s not, we could have just an open space but then probably shouldn’t use it for anything sensitive like listing names of people being considered for xyz etc.  Either way, it’d be good not to have the listservs as the only workspace where we keep track of what’s proposed, pending, finished….

The biggest loss in my mind in the transition from the ning was the deletion of the social networking function that allowed members to create pages and create/join groups. You’ll note for example the recent thread on ncuc-discuss about Interest Groups, in which several African colleagues said they’d like to join an IG on IG4D.  We have no means now to just create groups for people who want to work together on issues, and no way for members to say “here’s me.”  I don’t know if there’s anything that can be done about that, but would like to hear from folks who are site enabled.  And if the answer is nothing, then alternatives to consider…

Thanks again,

Bill