[Web Comm] Site map research and notes

[Jo Walsh]

dear Jody,

On Mon, Oct 16, 2006 at 10:31:48PM -0700, Jody Garnett wrote:
> - review of a similar site (eclipse.org) that has just made the 
> transition to a use based work flow
> - review of user stories from the wiki
> - placeholder for site map
> - visual draft (so you do not think I am crazy)
 
It is a thing of beauty. Do you, perhaps, dream in powerpoint form? 

I have always admired the Eclipse site for clarity and for
presentation of the foundation content as behind and supporting rather
than upfront and reinforcing the software and its accessories, as a
model you make a useful stealable deconstruction of it. 

The visual drafts make the most sense to me and I would like to see
more of them. I think I'm missing a sense of how the user stories,
connect through to what goes into layouts at this level. I suspect the
best way to find this out is through prototyping.

*pause while reading lots of email about the hosting situation*

Ideally I'd want to be able to hand over the second half of this doc,
augmented to an implementor in - drupal, plone, what have you, let's
be catholic - who is being paid to do that sort of thing. It's
possible to have a good time with drupal for free, but what you get is
what you see - something very 'default' looking and feeling. 

I envisaged three sets of - themes, layouts, what have you - one for
what you cheerfully refer to as "Parties", another for Projects which
would have more emphasis on walkthrough documentation, tutorial
creation etc, frontends to code repository and package management
where that can happen; and a third simple one for the Foundation overview. 

There is putative budget in the migration plan to buy someone's time. 
There is the time generously donated by Frank from Swapnil et al, but
I don't know how far it can be stretched. This should constitute part
of an RFP, there has been no remit to make this happen until the ED
can magically take care of it all, that is two more weeks, so it is
worth considering changing this. 

> I can upload the open office document some where if others would like a 
> stab at it.

I appreciated your effort to go easy on the eyes by using open
document formats, and hope my failure to express this didn't cause
this proprietary reversion. Yes if you do upload the original
somewhere I would like to find time to mess about with it a bit. 

I cannot really complain, having just discovered the joy of "Excel" after
using it for the first time to help my mother make spreadsheets for a
school inspection, and running across its function documentation. 
I start to appreciate what Rich has been getting at all these years
abuot playing "what-if games" with spreadsheets as both a metaphor for
and precursor to playing "what-if games" with usable desktop GIS
analysis tools. Er, I sense I am rambling. 

thanks, 


jo