[Web Comm] greetings (and other stuff)

[Jody Garnett]

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 :)
>   
Woot it is not just me - I don't find I know enough to start a website 
yet. I want to know who are target audience is and what they need to 
know. I also want to know who we are and what we want to tell them ;-)

After we get past that we can start in on the look and feel and colors 
base on what we are trying to communicate. You can see the difference 
between the (http://udig.refracitons.net) and the geoapi websites 
(http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEO/Home). The difference in intent is 
between a product (aimed at users) and a project (aimed at developers).

I would love to see to foundation take on a product feel (as visibility 
is a goal I have for the foundation to help us all with) and support the 
projects a bit further in when it gets into the hew and haw keeping the 
projects going.
> Working within the CN framework takes a bit of getting used to.  It picks up html pages and parses them into the centre of the layout.  I need to set up something locally so that I have a better idea of what it's going to look like before I commit.
>   
How much control do you have, remember I am going to have to steal the 
CSS sheets and fancy up confluence to look the same. The less decoration 
you pick up from the surrounds the better for me.
> 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 see you are thinking in the same direction as I am, but right now the 
foundation is at the "project stage" and needs to be a bit of a utility 
to help us communicate. The *nicest* page I have seen in a while was a 
proposal for Ruby, if we had something half as well thought out as this 
I would be a happy camper.
> 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.
>  
No worries we are all hackers around here and patches speak louder then 
words,
Jody