After a Board meeting tonight I'm figuring out more of how to organize the web tools.
This blog now emails to a Google Group (Palouse Prairie), where you can subscribe. The purpose of the blog is to chronicle Board events in detail. There is also a Board Calendar who's RSS appears on this Blog.
For the less addicted, there is another Google Group (Why Palouse Prairie) which can serve as a newsletter for prospective parents. RSS from that also appears on this page.
Google Docs offers a mechanism for posting and editing documents, but the hosting for PDF files is not yet resolved.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Developing a new web strategy
Ashley and I (Nils) were discussing strategies for managing the web presence of Palouse Prairie. Its a public organization, so why do we not make documents public? Why not post most all our business straight to the web?
So, here is where I'm going with that thinking. Blogger (this blog) permits multiple authors posting, so authorize all the Board. Allow comments from people with Blogger accounts.
We already have a Google Calendar. Use it for Agendas and link to Minutes. The Calendar has an RSS feed.
Google Docs allows collaborative writing, and publishing of documents. I can't recall how well it does RSS, but documents could be mentioned in the blog and published from Docs. Docs does not do a great job of formatting, so when a document gets finalized, it should be run through MSWord, then printed to PDF. Its not clear where to store the resulting file.
The website itself is hosted in Google Pages, but last time I was there, it only allowed one person to edit. This is a real problem, which makes that tool unappealing. Perhpas we can dump Google Pages all together. Blogger and Calendar and Docs might do it.
Finally, I have created a PalousePrairie Google Group. This has the advantage that it can allow people to manage their own subscriptions to email. It can be set up are Announce-only. What I'm doing right now is exploring what happens when the blog is linked to send email to the Group. I suspect it will quarantine this post, but maybe (hope) I can teach Groups to just pass through posts.
So, here is where I'm going with that thinking. Blogger (this blog) permits multiple authors posting, so authorize all the Board. Allow comments from people with Blogger accounts.
We already have a Google Calendar. Use it for Agendas and link to Minutes. The Calendar has an RSS feed.
Google Docs allows collaborative writing, and publishing of documents. I can't recall how well it does RSS, but documents could be mentioned in the blog and published from Docs. Docs does not do a great job of formatting, so when a document gets finalized, it should be run through MSWord, then printed to PDF. Its not clear where to store the resulting file.
The website itself is hosted in Google Pages, but last time I was there, it only allowed one person to edit. This is a real problem, which makes that tool unappealing. Perhpas we can dump Google Pages all together. Blogger and Calendar and Docs might do it.
Finally, I have created a PalousePrairie Google Group. This has the advantage that it can allow people to manage their own subscriptions to email. It can be set up are Announce-only. What I'm doing right now is exploring what happens when the blog is linked to send email to the Group. I suspect it will quarantine this post, but maybe (hope) I can teach Groups to just pass through posts.
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