[Web Comm] greetings (and other stuff)

[Frank Warmerdam]

Jason Birch wrote:
> Jody, I saw your IRC comment; I'm a bit lost too ;)  I keep sending emails
> and doing stuff without feedback.  I'm just waiting for a brick to land on
> my head.  If that happens, I'm going to blame Frank for his infectious
> impatience :)

Jason,

While I've been away for the weekend, I am so far pleased with all the
progress I've seen.

> Something I have been thinking about is how the site should be focussed.
> The About the Foundation page is pretty structured and boring.  This is OK
> (it's a foundation) but I think that we need to look at what the purpose of
> the site is.  Apart from being a portal to the projects, we also need to
> get our visitors excited about open source geospatial tools.  Some things
> that I think could help with this would be some nice colourful screenshots,
> "success stories", blurbs on each of the associated projects, maybe some
> "up close and personal with" type bio info on the board members...

I definitely agree this is a direction to move, though it will take a
significant amount of "content generation" and so will likely take some
time.

I would love to see a page that gives a brief understanding of how
some of the projects fit together.  I would also like to see some
white papers made available.  I believe Refractions did a paper a
year or so ago that would be quite a good fit.  It showed a variety
of the open source gis projects and their relationship.

> I know that this is a new group, and if anyone has taken offence I
> apologize for charging ahead.  I can feel the pressure building behind us
> though.  We are responsible for what is currently the most visible part of
> the foundation, and lots of stuff needs to be communicated.

Well, in my opinion, better to make a few mistakes and keep things moving
than sit around forever.  Having the web site under source control it is
pretty easy to undo something if needed.  But hopefully WebCOM will over time
establish areas of responsibility and good practice for notices of changes.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGF, http://osgeo.org