Oct. 16, 2003
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.
MAGWeb Listserv
There has been some confusion lately concerning the listserv.
At this meeting, the group decided that there should be a "gatekeeper" to
monitor who can sign up. If after a test period, there are no problems with vendors,
etc. signing up, we may switch to automatic registration. Barbara Hensley at
MARC will be the gatekeeper, so if you know of anyone that would like to be added
to the listserv, they can contact her at bhensley@marc.org.
We will also work on drafting a written listserv policy.
Remember that if you want to send a message to the group, the e-mail address is webmasters@lyris.marc.org. Hitting
the "Reply" button does not go to the whole group, just the sender. If you would like to share an answer
with everyone, you can hit "Reply all" or forward it to the address above.
This is a fabulous and free resource for asking questions and sharing information.
Call for New Officers
It has now been a year that I have been chairing the group and
taking minutes….C'mon folks, it's time for new faces to ante up! Please let me know if you would be interested
in either the position of Chair or Secretary or if you have a nomination. We will vote on new officers at the November
meeting.
Chair: officiates meetings, coordinates meetings and guest speakers/presentations, or
delegates these duties to other members.
Secretary: Takes
minutes and distributes them to group. Acts as support to the chair.
These positions are really no sweat…trust me, I've been doing both at
once!
Government Webmasters Conference Results
Thank you to all who assisted with or attended the conference.
It was a huge success with 200 participants. Feedback was extremely positive.
It looks as though we will have about $2,000 in the MAGWeb kitty. This money
may be used for group training, the MAGWeb Web site, or for assistance with the
conference next year.
We are planning to host again next year, probably in Overland Park. It is never too early to start thinking about
topics, guest speakers, etc.! Let us know if you would like to participate or have ideas.
Roundtable Discussion
John and Susan Howell from Kansas on the Net are looking for
suggestions regarding the creation of a MAGWeb-like group in the Wichita/southcentral Kansas area. Please e-mail
them at howell@kotn.org if you have ideas.
Karen Sorensen encouraged the group to pay attention to the legal battles surrounding Microsoft Internet Explorer
and plug-ins. This verdict could change how future browsers handle plug-in automation and support. You can find
tons of articles by searching for "Microsoft lawsuit plug-in".
The group discussed the issues surrounding bids and legal notices. Kelly Behr of Gladstone is looking for ideas
to help encourage city staff to provide these on the Internet and to reduce costs for printing them in the newspaper.
KCMO prints a short summary of the bid and refers readers to their Web site for more info, saving lots of money
in advertising.
Dan Davis encouraged the group to look into an up-and-coming technology, RSS. RSS is an XML format used for syndicating
news and similar content from online news sources. It is used for news feeds and syndication of content. If your
content is formatted correctly, RSS can automatically pull data from your Web site into a news aggregator with
automatic headline links back to your site. For more information, see msdn.com, search for RSS.
November Meeting: TBA, Possibly Flash
The next meeting will be Nov. 20. I have not had time to prepare
a topic yet, but the group was interested in seeing what Flash can do. I will try to round up a speaker. Please
let me know if you have a good Flash contact. More details to come via the listserv.
The meeting will be at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 20, at the MARC offices, 600 Broadway. Some folks usually
do lunch after the meeting. Let the group know if you'd like to join.
For those of you who were looking forward to an Intranet demo, one of our experts will be out of town for the Nov.
meeting, so we will try to schedule that for Dec. or Jan.
If you have any ideas for future topics or guest speakers, please share them
with Susan Waters, Overland Park (susan.waters@opkansas.org) or send them
via the listserv.
SJW