Field Report #12: Board Report = Field Report!

So... as I had to write this for a Board Report (tip: writing Field Reports is a bit like writing Board Reports;), I thought I would include it here as a Field Report. It details what I have done over the past 6 months as NAMAC's Online Community Manager.

Maybe someone might find some things in it that are helpful to them in planning, developing and implementing a website. There were many challenges along the way - much of it was simply just me NOT KNOWING HOW TO DO SOMETHING - but of course, much of it was assuaged by leveraging the knowledge of my CTC VISTA/peer network (i.e. Hey Josh King - how do i access MySQL through Terminal? Hey Ben, so how do i do a mysqldump again? - cheers dudes!)

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Overview:
While I was recruited as a VISTA to be NAMAC’s Online Community Manager, much of my work has revolved around comprehensive preparation and redevelopment of the site for the work this position entails. This work included heavy site analysis (how it works vs. how it could work) as well as the resolution of many high volume site migration and server issues. The workload has required more time and technical skill than initially expected, but marked a necessary refinement in work responsibilities to prepare the groundwork for NAMAC’s online community management.

Throughout the process I was able to get the support I needed, while developing innovative ideas to increase NAMAC’s future online capacities. Much of the support came from engaging a national network of fellow VISTAs, online community developers and the Drupal open-source community.

Our initial site launch is set for late April with a concerted effort to engage and welcome members and other stakeholders to the new site. There will still be various kinks to work out once launched, but the site will still be flexible enough to adapt and resolve these issues if need be.

Site Migration:
Throughout this process, I have:

• Acted as liaison between CAMT, the 9th Street IT department and NAMAC staff to troubleshoot web migration issues as they arose
• Engaged with national and local developer communities to resolve data migration and other web development issues
• Successfully imported all pages from the old site into a new custom-built development site

Site Development:
The major brunt of my work has been on ensuring that new feature requests from staff are indeed doable in Drupal – the chosen content-management system for the new site. In keeping with my work plan to ‘build for web 2.0 platforms’ I had to ensure utmost flexibility of the site to adapt to current and future online community and Internet trends.

With these requirements and goals in mind, I:

• Researched, implemented and tested best Drupal ‘modules’ to match with NAMAC feature requests
• Consulted with national networks of online community developers, knowledge management consultants, and Drupal developers both online and offline
• Lead weekly site development discussions with staff to resolve design issues and develop new areas for online community interactivity
• Integrated feedback from staff into various site areas

I have also documented all site work done on an internal staff wiki and am compiling a list of resources and training materials for future staff to use. I am also training and orienting staff to new administrative features while drafting an initial strategy for the site’s online growth, support and member engagement.

New Site Areas
With the collaborative efforts of Jack, Helen, Amanda and Dewey, I was able to design and implement new site areas to offer our Members.

These include:
The Idea Exchange
Keeping in mind our slogan to ‘energize independent voices in the media arts’ this new area is a hybrid of our current Hot Topics and Get Connected areas.

Key features of this area include:

• User submitted articles
• Newly enabled commentary on all articles posted to the site
• Social bookmarking functionality built in to all articles posted
• Cross linking of articles to site users and Member Organization pages

The Face of the Field
This section of the site is a multimedia, editorial-like section curated by NAMAC Staff. It is meant to feature the work and diversity of NAMAC’s national membership.

It accomplishes this by offering the following sections:

• Featured Leaders: leaders in the field highlighted each month
• Featured Organizations: a highlighted member organization and what they do
• User-submitted articles (pulled from the Idea Exchange)
• Current members events, announcements and job postings
• Links to browse and search our new and improved Member Directory

Advocacy and Policy
This area will feature policy issue briefs and analysis cultivated by NAMAC staff. There will also be handpicked articles and RSS feeds from our media policy and advocacy partners featured here.
Job Bank and Member Directory
Both of these have been rewritten and there is now an interactive Google map that visually displays clickable locations of our member organizations across the country.

Other Features
There have also been a host of new web 2.0 features we developed in the past few months.

A brief list follows:

• Ability for users to write their own categories for what they post and read on the site
• RSS subscribable Telesalon podcasts with embedded, playable and downloadable audio
• WYSIWYG formatting editor built in to content posting forms
• New and improved Member Directory area with sortable columns for Member Organization, State and Year Founded
• New and improved Job Bank with sortable columns for Organization Name, Job Location, Type and Deadline
• Ability to cross-reference Member Organizations in Articles
• Member Organization pages linking all articles and users associated with that organization on one ‘group’ page

Other Accomplishments
Other tasks I finished were:

• Coordinating the collection of online NAMAC Conference media from members
• Tracking and commenting on relevant blog posts from conference attendees (members and otherwise)
• Creating a new section on the current site to host post-conference articles, images, and video
• Coordinating and facilitating a panel discussion to represent the CTC VISTA Project at NAMAC’s conference
• Signed up and created various web 2.0 service accounts for NAMAC (Flickr, del.icio.us, blip.tv)

In maximizing my status as an AmeriCorps VISTA, I am also seeking and acquiring sponsorship for continued professional development in the field of web development and online strategy.

Future Directions
From my experiences over the course of my VISTA service, I envision NAMAC’s web and online community strategy evolving in to the future as such:

My hope is that the above plan might serve as an initial launching point for discussion between NAMAC Board, Staff and the Online Community Manager.

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