Here’s their district web home.

Andy was asked to tell the CL Board about the web team’s work. This will be a 5 min presentation followed by 5 minutes of discussion. This is tonight (Tues, 18th) at 7:55pm.

Our new name: Cedar Lane Web Team (CLWT)
We’ve met twice. People on the team.

Long term goals:

Create a vibrant, new interactive (Web 2.0) website that not only serves information to the friends, members, and does outreach like the current website does, but also

Provide

• content management, no funneling of content through a single person
• modern social networking & interactive with members & friend
• tools for RE & AP & group collaboration
• podcasts of sermons, talks, music, & lectures
• blogging by ministers and lay leaders
• forums for committees, youth & others
• hooks to UU presence on Facebook, Youtube, etc.

Importantly:

• better support for church staff & integration with our existing DB, do more, spend less
• From the web team, create a true IT team that can support the church in all its IT needs.
• enhance pastoral care
• Support for small churches.

Short term goals:

• Do a site-layout design session at the end of August to establish basic layout/sitemap
• Kickoff graphic design team
• Get a prototype up ASAP
• Meet with committees to gather requirements and ideas

Resources

• professionals and others on the web team, Mike, Holly, Andy, ++
• professionals with other UU’s in the area, River Road & Arlington
• professionals assoc with UUA nationwide, Shai Sachs, San Mateo
• the world of OSS
• formation of a regional web/tech team
• WebCon2009

Note the use of color and whitespace.  This will now be used to build a Drupal theme for the ChUUG website.

Proposed agenda:

1. 15 min. Welcome & Introductions
2. 10 min. Overview, Scope of Work
3. 10 min. Charlie’s Presentation (5MB PDF), an opportunity to stimulate ideas & get us on the same page with respect to website design .
4. 20 min. Q&A, Discussion and Planning
5. 5 min. Wrap Up, Next Steps

Let me know if you would like to add to or change the agenda. My preference is to keep the meeting to an hour (it’s a kickoff after all!), start on time, end on time, and make sure we have some next steps in place to keep the energy up.

Here’s some background on a few of us. Feel free to add yourself.

Here’s the original post on the web task force.

And some new things to work into the agenda:

From Karen Goozner,

One of the outcomes of the SJC January event was a discussion about how to promote social justice awareness and opportunity for action among congregants. One idea is to find venues to “curate” a record of current activities people can join, and another is to curate a record of Cedar Lane’s past contributions to the social justice movement locally and nationally. Under the umbrella of “Cedar Lane: Giving Life the Shape of Justice” there are three basic eggs I’m personally trying to hatch:

(1) The Virtual Wall Project: this is a digital collection of images of all kinds and text to promote knowledge and understanding of “who, what, how, why” Cedar Laners are doing now. These collections would be stored and updated on the web site. On Sunday mornings, the collection would be projected on a wall in the lounge. This ever-evolving record of images, testimonials, text explanations, etc., would communicate the participants and work of each of the committees, task forces, etc, engaged in social justice action in the church.

(2) The Real Wall Project: responsibility for decorating the bulletin board at the bottom of the stairs leading to the RE lobby would rotate during the school year between classrooms. “Giving Life the Shape of Justice” bulletin board would allow each set of teachers to focus on the 7 Principles with their students in whatever way they want for their time-share.
(3) The Legacy of Justice Project: An AE and/or teen project for interested members to develop interview formats and then record interviews with the many members of our congregation who have stories to share about their parts as Cedar Laners in the American movement for social justice over the past fifty-years.

What can we do to help with (1)? Karen also asks, “what would you think of doing a couple of seminars to develop a cadre of adult and teen techies who could provide a first line of support to committees looking to use technology for these projects?”

In terms of outreach between organizations wishing to help each other use the web more effectively for social justice, just today I was contacted by one of the people who runs UpWithCommunities.com/. It’s a neat concept and just the sort of organization with whom I’d like to build a relationship.

Task Force Members

Len Adler
Bonnie Beavers
Abraham Brody
John Daniel
Sara Deshler, CL Church Administrator
Holly Eckard
Kristin Grassel, CL Membership Coordinator
John Gubbings , ChUUG chair
Charlie Kaylor
Robin Larkin, past web minister
Ariel Mora
Carolyn Morrissey
Mike Morse
Andy Streich, CLUUC Web Task Force coordinator
Corinne Woodward, CL Admin. Asst. & current web minister

A longer, but very engaging presentation:

A good one from the pulpit:

One church’s use of youtube:

Earlier this year, the Army established an online and social media division within its public affairs office. The division’s director, Lt. Col. Kevin Arata, said the search is on every day to find new avenues online to reach not only soldiers, but their families and the general public.

The Army is on Facebook now, has a blog, and uses Twitter.

Even Gen. Raymond Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, has a new Facebook page to answer questions about the mission in Iraq and spread the word about what the troops are accomplishing there.

There’s more…

The Air Force has also established a Facebook page, Twitter feeds and a blog, while the Marine Corps is using various networking sites mainly for recruiting purposes. The Navy is “experimenting” with several forms of online media, and some of its commands are using Twitter, a spokesman said. Even the Coast Guard commandant regularly updates his Facebook status while traveling.

Please know our task force is open to everyone since we are all web site users and friends or members of Cedar Lane. Some of you have told John D, Sara, and me (the people who read the it [at] cedarlane [.] com email) quite a bit about your skills or that you don’t think you bring much to the table beyond enthusiasm. Please share what you can with each other to break the ice and so each of us can learn who to look to for what. I’m sure there is quite a lot of variety. For example, any of the following might apply:

• I’m just interested in helping out, not sure I can do more than make suggestions as a potential user and review work as it progresses.  [We need testers/evaluators and people to represent ordinary users.]
• I know or can learn how to use a CMS, so I can help as an admin.
• I know something about what at least some people need and want to make sure the new website provides it.
• I can help find out what various groups in the church want/need.
• I can help suggest and organize the content.
• I’m a competent writer and will help create/edit content.
• I’m an artist (or graphic designer or photographer) and can contribute my work.
• I can provide home cooking and 24×7 emotional support.
• I’d really like to learn how a CMS works.
• I rock with Dreamweaver.
• I know PHP, JavaScript, XML, HTML, & CSS pretty well and am interested in helping develop custom modules.

Use the comment section to tell us as much or as little about your interests and skills as you like.