World Wide Web Steering Committee

June 10, 1997
Minutes

Present: Steve Butts, Nancy Truesdell, Robert Lowe, Bjornerud, Peter Peregrine, Dave Baird, Steve Hirby, Steve Blodgett, Pete Gilbert

The meeting was devoted to a discussion of the draft plan Steve Butts had developed to guide our conversion from the existing Web structures and contents to the new one developed by the committee at its retreat in May. In presenting the plan, Steve Butts emphasized that its usefulness in guiding our work depends on its completeness. No disagreement with the structure of the plan was voiced, and it was acknowledged that much more detail is needed.

Issues of the graphic design and the information design of the new site were discussed, though no conclusions being reached. Several questions were raised regarding the implementation of the plan: will we have to write much new content, or can we make use of most of the existing content; will we develop a new look or use the existing one; will we try to develop a selected branch of the site extensively as a demo, temporarily ignoring other branches...or will we try to convert all branches of the new tree simultaneously?

By the end of the meeting, several clear next steps were identified to help us make best use of our time together at our next meeting on July 14.

"Homework" was assigned as follows:

All members:

Identify specific tasks needed to build the new web site and e-mail descriptions of those tasks to Steve Butts for inclusion in the plan.

Find existing Web sites whose graphic design or information design you like and bring their URLs to the next meeting.

If you have specific likes and dislikes you'd like to see honored in the creation of our new Web site, share them by e-mail with the committee. (You can send e-mail to the entire committee by addressing it to web-steer+hirbys@lawrence.edu).

Steve Blodgett

Determine the "recipe" for producing banner images of the kind that characterize the top levels of www.lawrence.edu; determine the tools needed and the time typically required to produce such an image.

Peter Peregrine

Work out a version of the www.lawrence.edu-look that could be created using HTML tags and scanned photos but without use of Photoshop or a comparable tool for colors, image placement, typesetting, etc.

Pete Gilbert

Develop a standard approach to the "information design" of the new site, where this term refers to the structuring of information and navigation, including standardization of content and navigation elements on each page, so that visitors can obtain information and move from place to place easily.