Forum - Electronic Communications Committee

Hi, Tom. 

Thank you for responding to my kick-off meeting note and acting on the wiki/forum development issues so quickly.

I agree that the Annual Planning Committee space needs to be kept private, and accessible only by the planning committee volunteers.

I created the Sponsorship Committee space and struggled on how to move those old 2007 sponsorship documents under this new space. Thank you for moving those 2007 sponsorship documents to this new Sponsorship Committee space. The hierarchy you created is just what I wanted to do. It was easy to create a new space for Sponsorship Committee, but for some reason I could not find it under the Annual Planning Committee space.

Could you give us a basic primer on how to create a new space, how to add documents under each new space, how to use the forum within each committee space? These are the minimum things that each committee would need...or the other option is for you to create a space for  each of the following committees  - Workshops, Exhibits, Registration, Program, etc. and provide the link to the subfolder or hierarchy of documents under each committee space. Let us know what you think would work well.

Thanks.

Cynthia

Cynthia:
I am still not ready to provide the basic primer you are asking for since the basic template for the PIUG wiki has not yet been set up. I expect navigation and functionality will become much more evident after the staff at Adaptavist completes their basic setup work.

An example of how it isn't working "right" yet, I believe that your "comment" should have been either a new discussion topic or a reply to a current discussion topic and not a comment on the forum page. It would probably be a discussion topic on "Tips and Techniques for Wiki and Forum Use." When the new forum template is set up, you will be able to add topics or make replies easily and won't be tempted to add a comment. Comments are good for wiki pages but don't follow the flow or intent of discussion forums. We just can't expect you or others do this "right" with the current setup.

I will retain responsibility for creating new spaces and forums for team for the time being, as well as the corresponding user groups and permissions. On a related matter, I hope I have set in motion development of an automated process for validating current PIUG members for access to PIUG members-only content. However, I don't think there will be such an automated process in the current wiki for team membership; I hope that we will have moderators who can approve such team membership.

Within each space or each forum, users add documents or topics with the Add Documents or Add topics links. I anticipate that the location and format of these links will change in the new wiki and forum templates and that such actions will be even more obvious. Adding attachments is fairly easy at this point (Add...Attachment) but I currently don't like how one actually links to or finds them. I figured out how to do it in the current setup but anticipate finding attachments being more obvious on the future.

I want to encourage participation in the current wiki and forum setup. That said, we are not going to be using them optimally for the time being.

Tom

Tom,

Ok, we'll wait for you and Adaptavist to provide us instructions when you are ready.

 In the meantime, as you suggested, could you create a space and corresponding forum for each planning committee, at the very least the following committees - workshops, exhibits, program and registration? Based on past year's planning activities, these are the committees (in addition to sponsorship committee space which I have already created) that need to be activated early on to get things going for next year's conference. At the kick-off meeting on Wednesday, I would like to encourage these committee volunteers (workshops,exhibits, program, sponsorship, registration) to start using the wiki/forum if at all possible... as soon as these spaces/forum are ready.

Thanks again for your initiatives.

Cynthia