Community Site

Page for collecting thoughts and discussion for a community focused website. A less-formal web site presence that is not intended for outward communication, but for building/encouraging and interacting with OSGeo communities.

Use discussion page for chatter and detailed questions, add relevant points to the items below.

Goals

Develop a simple site that engages the community
Collect/share information between members
To have a slightly more open site for contributions than primary outward-facing site

Platform & Boundaries

Run using standard SAC-supported Drupal tools
Use secondary server so tools are separate from main website
Should not overlap main website functionality (it may ingest some) or take away from other efforts

Specific Functions

This list is more for showing the types of possibilities and is not meant as a comprehensive list of planned functionality. It is to give an idea of how the average user might interact with the site and its tools. Each tool will likely be on its own page or may be a block on the front page. The distinction isn't made here as it will vary. Some items may not be useful at all, let's discuss them...

Blog feed

present most recent 5-10 blogs from Planet OSGeo

- but this is already available on the main site. Dedicated "followers" will just visit planet.osgeo. Otherwise this is a traffic-driver, to keep the website looking fresh and busy, which would be useful on the main site.

Community blogging site - for local chapters, other users

Additional community contributed news (less major), sorts of entries

Polls/surveys

for various informal purposes, gauging interest in ideas, taking snapshots of community

- who is the "community"?

Hosting documentation and files

e.g. front-end to educational material, presentation library

Why shouldn't this material be on the main site or committee subsections of it?

Membership management tools

sign up as a member, join groups

Syndication

Ingest events and news listings from main server

Local Chapters

Local Chapter tools - allowing people to join, vote on things, maintain records/files

...

Structure & Responsibilities

The site would be:

Built on common tools
Overseen by two or more volunteers
Have a volunteer moderator for each section of the site
Volunteer driven - no function would be implemented without a committed volunteer
Used and kept up to date - volunteers would be responsible for keeping sections up to date

Negatively speaking, without the above structure the site should not be pursued.

Concerns

Should be tied to plans/guidance from Marketing Committee
Overlap with main website would distract - why isn't the main website for the "community"?
Potential SAC support needed, keeping needs isolated, reduce low level help
Keeping it active/relevant, may take away some volunteer energy which is really needed on the main website
Waste of time... could be done on wiki
...