March 18, 2004
Please feel free to invite some of your colleagues from your or another city/county if you think it would benefit them to be a part of our group!
Location: MARC, Kansas City
(Meetings alternate monthly between MARC in Kansas
City and the City of Overland Park, KS.)
Attendance
City of Gladstone , MO : .......... Kreg Cox and Kelli Behr
City of Kansas
City , MO : ....... Rich Lovett
City of Olathe , KS : ................ Chris
Holdman
City of Overland Park , KS : ..... Chris Audano, Randy Ellis, and
Susan Waters
City of Shawnee , KS : ............ Sonya Fendorf, Roman Madrigal,
and Audrey Merrell
Johnson County , KS : ............ Tom Erickson and Karen
Lynne Sorensen
MARC, KC Metro: ................. Barbara Hensley
Wyandotte County , KS : .........
Angela Her, Sandy Mai, and Jennifer Wagner
Chris Audano, Chair, welcomed all attendees. The February minutes were approved.
Intranet Demonstrations
Two members shared their sites.
The first presenter emphasized a common challenge, “now that it’s built, how do we get it going?” In her case, personable, creative solutions have proven successful.
The second presenter emphasized research and practical planning. The resulting site assists end user’s with a strong navigation and help system plus a consistent look and feel. End users also have the option to become content creators and submit their own information, autonomously. To meet future growth, the site utilizes Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
Both sites are created with an off-the-shelf Web site design software (Dreamweaver), accentuated by graphics produced with Fireworks and utilize templates; are produced, promoted and maintained by a central coordinator (the presenters); hosted on a local server; serving between approximately 100 to 200 employees. Acceptance and active participation by the end users the intranets are designed for is not immediate.
The first presenter, Barbara Hensley, a Public Affairs Specialist for the Mid-America Regional Council, presented a live demonstration of their intranet which is captioned, “Your online source for employee news and information.”
Major links, in the interactive drop down menu (generated in Fireworks), include: Staff Information, Benefits, Payroll and Forms, How-to Information, Finance Department and Forms, Logos and Images, Recycling Information, Office Policies, and Publications. Forms are usually interactive PDFs.
Generation of content is mostly based in response to growth as evident in emails. Any topic that becomes repetitive is conducive to transforming into reference material on their intranet. Most of this information has been transformed into two helpful and popular columns, “Tidbits” and “How to.” The later, for example, includes computer problems, “How to run a virus scan”, and “Something’s broken! Who do you call?”
Another feature that caught the focus of the attendee’s attention was an interactive map of MARC’s building and office space. As the end user clicks on an office or “hot spot”, the relevant employee’s photograph and pertinent contact information shows up. In Dreamweaver, this is achieved by selecting the application’s Behavior options, “showing” and “hiding” layers. The upper most layer become an invisible “hot spot.” Layers or “hot spots” are usually created with specialized pointer tools from a “Draw” and “Paint” menu. Dreamweaver has many other Behaviors to choose from, as well, which are essentially repackaged Javascript code. For those interested in this creating effect, there are many more variations. Begin by conducting a search online or consult your software application’s help section using the keywords, “Image map.”
More strategies to keep information current and invite participation are: 1) ask receptionists to forward updated information, and 2) ask technical support personnel to set the employees’ browsers so the browsers automatically opens to the organization’s intranet site.
The second presenter, Karen Lynne Sorensen, Internet Projects Manager at Johnson County Wastewater, shared an outline of the initial research she did for their Intranet designed about three years ago. A PDF version of her outline is available either by downloading it from the KC site or emailing Karen directly, karen.sorensen@jcw.org.
I. Overview and Considerations.
2. Examples of content provided of a municipal Webmaster’s site (discontinued in 2001 due to lack of funding.)
3. Note: www.yahoo.com > groups is a similar but more casual alternative and free.
Online article, “Why Intranets Fail.” -- http://www.darwinmag.com/read/110101/intranet.html
1. Insufficient Planning.
2. Ignoring the User.
3. Lack of Organization.
4. Nobody in Charge.
5. Management’s Disconnect.
II. Production Process.
a. Team system – brainstorm and potential user feedback loop.
b. Prototype.
i. Navigation and help system emphasized.
ii. Designed with CSS.
Following the presentations, group discussion included:
A general consensus among members responsible for their organization’s intranet… announcements of new information is a key to promoting participation. Presenting fresh information each day is ideal but rarely realistic considering limited staff, time and resources.
There are mixed feelings, thoughts and results in regards to employee classifieds.
Southwestern Bell ’s phone page CD works well as a shortcut on an end user’s pc desktop or included as part of an Intranet.
A clarification that Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Professional creates interactive forms, the standard version, which costs less, does not.
Old
Business
a) 2004 Government Webmasters Conference Update
September 23-24, 2004, “Conference
2004”
KC president Chris Audano asked Rich Lovett, from the City of Kansas City, MO, to visit various government-related webmaster listservs. His task was to obtain responses from attendees to the first conference. The response was overwhelmingly positive. The conference is considered to be a “best value.”
Progress made by the current conference’s central planning committee is encouraging, too. Various speakers and vendors are committing. The selection process is still open, however, and Rich encouraged suggestions for topics, speakers, vendors, etc., to continue. A presentation focusing on GIS applications, for example, was suggested by KC member, Jennifer Wagner, from Wyandotte County.
As a reminder, the following is included:
The fee is $125.00 if it is submitted by August 2; $150.00 by August 2-10. Meals included. There’s no profit to keep costs down. Room rates are $88.00 until “the block is gone.” All info will be posted on the site as the planning progresses.
The revised list of possible topics, include:
– Accessibility with screen reading software demonstrated.
– Cascading
Style Sheets.
– Content Management.
– Digital photography and editing.
– Free and
cheap resources.
– Web hosting solutions.
– Web tours including Web cams.
– Writing for
the Web.
Plus:
– Breakout sessions (shorter than last year’s) geared towards small and large governments, technical and non-technical Web production personnel.
Our Web site designer, Roman Madrigal, a police officer with the City of Shawnee, departed before we could hear his update (Duty called, yes?), however, Rich Lovett provided a brief summary. A preview of the new site is posted, however, at http://www.kcmagweb.org . More Cold Fusion-based interactivity, as a group effort, is to be added by various members.
Upcoming Meeting Topics
Next month, Microsoft’s SharePoint Services
will be presented by Microsoft.
The SharePoint Services with Enterprise Portal give an organization all it needs to create a comprehensive intranet presence for their organization, and intranet portal. It's a real robust product for collaboration, very flexible and well organized. It includes team sharing sites, sites for departments, surveys, document management including versioning, discussion threading, event calendars, inventories, picture libraries, alerts, personal sites, and an extremely rich and powerful search engine.
Next Meeting Date: April 15, 2004
City of Overland Park , Kansas
8500 Antioch Drive ( Police Building)
Overland Park, KS
Meeting minutes by Karen Lynne Sorensen.