Little M: Planned Projects

Our Web site is still growing . . .

. . .We could use your help.

Notes by Bud Stolker, previous Little M Webmaster
November 22, 1999

When Metropolitan Washington Mensa's Little M Web site opened in mid-1996, Mary Matthews and I vowed to make it "the best Mensa Web site in the world." At the time there were very few Mensan sites anywhere in the world. But like everything else on the Internet, the scope and range of the Mensa Web has exploded in the past few years. Mensans are using their considerable talents to do everything we have done locally . . . and more. American Mensa Web sites have become so common that a group without at least a basic Web page is a rare group indeed.

While I am proud of what Mary and I have accomplished with Little M, there's still much to be done. Both of us stayed busier than we expected with everyday business after we launched our Web site, and Little M, once so fresh and exciting, slowly drifted out of date.

Then Mary's husband Jerry retired, and the couple moved to Florida. That left yours truly to be the solo publisher of our dynamic group's Web site. MWM is one of the largest Mensa groups in the country, and our plans for Little M were equally large. I regret to say that the list of unfinished Web projects remains long. I have not been fully equal to the twin tasks of running my own computer business and making Little M the ultimate Mensa Web site.

At the moment Little M is a mostly static site. I update the events calendar monthly, the front page on demand, and the many lists of people, groups, addresses, and events as the specifics drift out of date and relevance.

But Metropolitan Washington Mensa still deserves--and will have--a premiere Web site among Mensan sites worldwide.

It takes a community to build a Web site. So . . . I now acknowledge that I need help with our Web site. Several of you who are reading this have already volunteered to take on some Web management tasks, and that's great. I thank you, not only for offering to help out, but because it affirms my belief that our Web site should be a community project.

Well, how best to use your talent and expertise? It's pointless to take valuable volunteer help and try to boss people around. The oft-heard phrase "herding Mensans is like herding cats" comes to mind. And I'm not the bossy type anyway.

So instead I thought I'd lay out some plans and immediate needs for the Little M site and let you choose projects that interest you. You would be deemed (if you so desired) Associate Webmasters, and would have the freedom to create and/or manage your own segment of Little M.

Below is a list of Web-related projects that I have in mind. You may have other ideas for our group's Web site. Please feel free to suggest your own page(s) and projects. I ask that we coordinate and agree on fundamentals before I hand over the keys to the kingdom. With the passwords needed for Web publishing comes the responsibility to publish in a way that helps MWM look good and be proud.

Beyond the nuts and bolts of getting you up and running as a Little M associate, I'd like to encourage you to be as creative and as diverse as our brilliant and talented membership can be. These are a few of the projects which I've implemented or planned for our Web site. I would appreciate your help on any or all of them.

Chat Room

(http://www.mwm.org/talk.html) (http://www.egroups.com/group/littlem):

So far this facility has been unpublicized, and therefore unused. It doesn't even have a name yet. We need to tell MWM members that they have a chat room. At the moment all registrations pass through me; I'm not even keeping up with adding people to the eligible chat list. We need to have someone administer the chat room. Once the conversation starts in earnest, it may be a flood. Because we have plenty of outspoken members, we may need a moderator to keep the lawyers at bay and the lawsuits away.

Photos

I'm starting to receive photos taken at recent events. Some of them are good; some less so. But they all represent contributions by our members, and that's important. Often with a little creative scanning and tinkering they can be made better. They're a record of who we are and what we're doing, and they're valuable.

Photos can take a lot of space on the server. They require scanning, cropping, organization, and layout. I'd like to see us use one of the free Web photo servers like Zing.com (http://www.zing.com). Zing has several important features:

It helps organize the photos into albums.
It automatically generates thumbnails, so that download time can be minimized. (In return, it puts advertising on our pages.)
It lets viewers generate greeting cards for free and gifts (like mugs) for sale. I have a hunch we could incorporate some of its products into our own (future) MWM Web Store.

Message Board

We have been receiving mail like the following:

I'd like to get this announcement out: Mensans in Prince William County can vote for one of their own on November 2nd. I'm running as the Libertarian Party candidate for Chairman of the Board of County Supervisors. More information is available at http://www.mcbrides.home.netcom.com.

Moving to N. Virginia/D.C, area 15 JAN when husband moves to Pentagon. No place to live yet, so can't select meeting site yet. Any leads on employment will be most appreciated, since I can't play 'till I have work. I am an attorney licenced in VA & FL with 4 years JAG experience.

I'd like to see messages like this posted prominently. Communicating is what our group--as well as our Web site--are all about. We could really use an active message board administered by someone who can keep it up to date.

MWM E-Directory

(http://www.mwm.org/membdir.html)

This is terribly out of date. I partially automated the signup procedure, so that all adds/changes/drops would automatically be e-mailed to the Webmaster. But I didn't count on so much activity! I have about 400 kilobytes of information that has to be integrated with the on-line list, and then the list should be kept up to date.

Members' Biographies

(http://www.mwm.org/membbios.html)

Let's have more bios! Write your own and submit it! Interview others at MWM functions! Be a roving reporter! Be nosy! We have lots of stories waiting to be told.

Calendar of Events

(http://www.mwm.org/calendar.html)

It would be great if the Programs Office could create the Capital M (our print publication) calendar with software that also outputs HTML code. I know Microsoft Publisher does this, for example. But with everyone already so busy, this may be impractical. What if the Programs Officer doesn't prepare the calendar electronically, or doesn't want to take on the added burden of HTML publishing? Leo Cotnoir tried preparing an HTML calendar last season, but we quickly ran into software compatibility problems. Even if we do get a monthly routine going, we'd have to re-coordinate the activity each time we change Programs Officers.

I'd like to find a volunteer who can keep a Web-based calendar up to date. An on-line calendar such as that offered by Calendars.net (http://www.calendars.net) seems well-suited to our needs. (Yahoo and Netscape also have calendars, but they clutter them with logos and banner ads.) Using Calendars.net has several advantages:

The service is free and carries no advertising (yet).
Anyone with a Web browser can enter the calendar information, so there's no specific software to learn (though there's some free downloadable software for those who want to prepare the calendar off-line).
It's secure; no one but the calendar administrator can add or change entries.
It's archival: The old calendars can stay on-line forever.
It's customizable by the viewer. Each member can view the calendar by the week or month, and at their own screen resolution.
Multiple group calendars can be merged. If American Mensa ever decides to use the same system, we can "subscribe" to it, which would enable national events (such as the AG or RGs) to appear automatically on our calendar.
And . . . if they ever start charging for the service, we can just switch to another provider's calendar the following month.

Here are some good examples of Calendars.net group pages:

http://www.calendars.net:8187/gcweb and http://www.calendars.net:8187/belltown and http://www.calendars.net:8187/swing.

Special Events

Events like our upcoming Regional Gathering need special handling and their own sets of pages. This year, for example, we have an RG page (http://www.mwm.org/rg),but it cries out for someone to get in there and extol the benefits of RG attendance, to list the calendar of RG events, and so forth. The RG Committee has its hands full; those volunteers could use a hand with Web publicity. There are other events from time to time that loom up in too much of a hurry to make a splash in Capital M. Just this month, for example, we publicized Mensa's National Testing Day and the WETA fund-raising drive.

Sections Which Haven't Worked Out

Our initial setup of the Web site included some areas which I haven't kept going: the Peripatetic Cookbook, poetry and prose, news and reviews, humor, art, etc. A few people have, on occasion, contributed tidbits, and I've put them up as time permitted. Better would be to have someone take responsibility for the joke section, or for a creative writing page, or whatever, and keep it fresh. Or perhaps we should just drop those dead sections for now, in favor of sections that work and that generate interest.

Additional Issues

In a perfect world, we could all work together in perfect harmony. In the real world, some of you are PC people; some of you use Macs. Some have Pentium IIIs or G4s; some are still using 286s. (I have at least one client who's still using his Landmark XT as his primary computer, though I doubt that he surfs the Web with it.) Some may have special needs or issues (you may be blind and/or be using a text-based Web browser, for example). Some of you may be adept at Java programming; others may have their browser's Java components disable.

I would hope there's room on our Web site for all of you.

Because it's unlikely that we can all agree on Web page creation software, I'd like each Associate Webmaster to bring his/her own tools to the job and to be responsible for creating and maintaining his/her corner of our Web. As Webmaster I need to retain the right (and the responsibility, as the group's official Web person) to make occasional changes in cosmetics and/or content. And we may contain your content in a larger frame for purposes of navigation and uniformity. But in general, within our broad guidelines (with which you'd need to be familiar), I'd like you to be fairly autonomous, and for your pages to have their own individual look. Such content areas would be labeled (for example) "Jerry Johnson's Photo Pages" or "Melinda's Message Board."

I have no problem with your linking to your own personal or commercial Web sites from Little M, with a few minor restrictions: no links to advertising from our main page; no links to pornography or other seriously controversial pages without appropriate, prominently labeled warnings, and soforth. There's some talk of the American Mensa page refusing to link to any local group site that doesn't carry a Web rating. I intend to ignore mandatory Web ratings as long as possible, preferring to do our own internal policing of our own site. We do have kids in our group, and this is their Web too, but I do not wish to ignore or exclude adult content, as long as it's not in anybody's face.

In Summary . . .

There's plenty of room for you to express yourself as an Associate Webmaster, and I encourage you to do so. Write me at webmaster@mwm.org or give me a call at 703-370-2242 and let me know what appeals to you. Together we really can make Little M the best Mensa Web site in the world!

-- Bud Stolker, Little M Webmaster

Back to Little M's home page: http://www.mwm.org