Web Steering Committee Minutes
November 8, 2001

Attending: Steve Blodgett (for the last ten minutes), Jim Evans, Pete Gilbert, Steve Hirby, Joey Lawrance, Michael Thorp

1. Hirby was unanimously and enthusiastically elected chairperson pro tem.

2. Hirby gave Lawrance some background about the committee and our current work.

3. Our current work:

   Hirby began by reviewing the Three Things: graphic design, information design, and content management. We recalled that at our last meeting we had decided that that order was our preference. Gilbert reported that the Web Working Group had discussed the same items and had ordered them: information design, graphic design, content management.

   We discussed content management:

   • We don't want to buy a proprietary system from a vendor that may be out of business next year.
   • Lawrence is not ready for another major computing conversion project.
   • We may be able to get by with Dreamweaver templates and file management.
   • Content management (in the sense of a database driven back-end) is still a long-term goal but not a priority for this redesign project.

   We discussed information design:

   • Info design is not separate from graphic design.
   • We might be able to do this (usability testing) ourselves but it would take more time and energy than we have.
   • Do we simply need to move the links up to the top of the page and get rid of the boilerplate paragraphs?

   We discussed graphic design:

   • Graphic design is not separate from info design.
   • We might be able to do this ourselves (make Marsha do it) but it would take more time and energy than we have.
   • There was some feeling that all we want/need is a more flexible, easier-to-update template.
   • How much graphic design do we want? A simple header and footer? Colors and fonts and a set of accent graphics? A complete graphic template (like we have now)?

4. The proposals:

   We decided there was no need to consider any of the older proposals except for Art & Logic, Netcasters, and Innovation and Imagination, Inc. We did not discuss the new Upstart Innovations proposal and we're still waiting on a Planet Propaganda proposal.

   Evans suggested trying "can we work with these guys" as an evaluation criterion -- if we can't tell from their proposals, maybe we should invite them over for a chat.

5. Next meeting:

   We decided that we need to meet more frequently until we get this settled (aka "holding our feet to the fire") so we agreed to meet on Thursday, November 15, at 3:00 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,
Pete Gilbert, Secretary of the Day