Those present introduced themselves.
Tim Sutton (TS) recommended that there was a Chair for the meeting and a secretary to take minutes. Nick agreed to be Chair and Hillary to take minutes.
The Chair emphasised that the sole purpose of the meeting was to introduce and discuss the new website www.josephineavenue.org.uk created by TS, which has been tested for the last month or so by users.
- TS took the meeting through the site. He explained that its gestation was exploring the usefulness of WordPress for Urban Art. In doing so, he realised that a similarly constructed site could extremely beneficial for residents.
Its intention is to provide an accessible site which is flexible and strengthens community identity.
The explanation of how the site works included the following points:
– It combines the functions of a website and a blog.
– The street blog is the ‘guts’ of the site, consisting of members’ posts. The member’s area requires those signing up to leave a phone number and address. All members (ie those signed in) can then post (become Authors). (Would personal data held be compliant with data protection regulations? – Hillary) TS said he has used standard advice wording to create this section.)
– The more static Articles pages would be written by individual Editors with a personal interest in the topic.
– The site can be adapted and reconfigured to meet residents’ changing requirements; so different areas of interest can be added to reflect circumstances or a topical interest.
– The website provides users with different ways to access information:
- View the publicly available information
- Sign up to become a member and post a comment
- Subscribe to a weekly email via Mail chimp for a weekly digest of activities
- Subscribe to the RSS feed
Hillary asked what the drawbacks were. It was noted that you cannot post direct to the website from email? (Gary noted that this was an option through yahoo groups that he finds useful)
Emmanuel, JAG Treasurer, pointed out that the most recent data on JAG residents, the JAG survey, identified email as the communications medium of choice.
- Site access and ownership: the site is run by an Administrator who controls IT – design, menus, plug ins, SQL, database and server back up. The Admin needs to have the requisite level of technical expertise to do this. TS offered to be the Administrator. A vote taken later confirmed that the great majority had confidence in TS as an Administrator, and there were no objections. However, there were abstentions (see 6).
TS said it could be hosted on a JustHost server which he uses, for free. Data is backed up regularly and the user name and password for the site could be left with a trusted party as further security.
- Moving forward: Given the unanimous praise in the meeting for the website, TS was asked if it could not be transferred to the domain josephineavenue.org. TS said this was technically possible but opposed by the JAG Committee. Discussion followed. The Chair referred the meeting to its purpose.
TS asked that the meeting decide “Should JAG have one official site and which should it be?” The meeting voted 11 for www.josephineavenue.org.uk with 3 abstentions. The Chair considered submissions by Gary, who stated that, whilst the .org.uk site was self-evidently so much better, the process of adopting it was contentious. Emmanuel wanted the site to be discussed at a meeting with the JAG Committee present. Hillary said that the agenda for this meeting was publicised as a discussion of the new website and that taking decisions about ‘which JAG website’ were beyond that agenda.
- The meeting agreed that, whilst this special meeting had been properly formed and had the power to make a decision on which website, and that the new website should be the one adopted, it would be better if this could be discussed and decided at the next JAG meeting in collaborative debate.
Hillary
[I’m sorry I didn’t get everyone’s names. I have identified speakers where I know them. If you would like to amend these minutes or add comments, please do so below.]
View slides shown at meeting by clicking this image:
