Were I to propose a renovation of the APCUG Web Contest, There are several things that would be useful to know and document as we undertake the task.

• What is the history of the Contest? How long has it run, by whom, how did it originate, and how well has it served it's purpose? Was the purpose ever written?

• What do the Board of Directors and the Officers of APCUG hope to achieve with the contest?

• Is the BOD, and are the officers, open to revisiting the rationale of the contest?
• A planning format I would suggest:

Purpose (or Mission) of the contest

    Goals to be Achieved

        Strategies Developed to achieve the goals

            Actions to be Taken

                People to be engaged, stake-holders involved in developing all stages

                    Time Line that stretches backwards from the 2008 Convention.

            If we choose this model for developing the process, then we're starting none too early.

• It is my thought that any of the stakeholders can modify this document, and refine any parts as we progress... We can model a process that anyone can use for events planning, and it can be as "transparent" as possible. All webmasters could participate.

Did I mention that the PBWiki is FREE...no cost, in the form we're using. And, we can copy any or all of this to the APCUG Web Board

Taking a stab at further outlining a process...

Purpose (or Mission) of the contest 2008

The purpose of the Website Contest is to focus public and member club attention on the values of well designed and executed websites to publicize the activities, work and values in clubs involved in the "Users Helping Users" ethic, and to focus attention on each outstanding Computer User Group.

Goals to be Achieved:

Strategies Developed to achieve the goals:

The Actions required:

Tasks:

Develop A Time Line that backs up from the 2008 Convention.

Ruminating on Uses of Website Pages and Contest Criteria

It appears that the primary dissatisfaction with the APCUG Website Contest may be that the judging criteria stated in the entry form may not reflect the criteria that the various member club web developers set out to achieve when designing their web pages. From a cursory view of a number of Club pages of clubs hosted by APCUG, I see "billboards", private listings of activities, wide open summaries and photographs of all activities, virtual carnivals of cartoons and photographs, "professional service" types of home pages, Newsletter home pages, and "functional bulletin boards". Any effort to conform this diversity of existing home pages is, in my opinion, not going to effect much change. The highly independent personalities of the website developers are being expressed, and that's probably the way they like it.

Few club websites have "members only" areas. In those areas one can only guess what the content is and how it is presented. Some websites appear to be only speaking to their members, while others seem to publicizing their sites to the public without much concern for member uses of the site.

So what, in all this diversity, is the "right way" to build a club website? Clearly, there isn't one right way. And, there's not just one list of what should be included in every web page. There's not one list of criteria that covers all the various uses of the club websites, either. But, clearly, there is one concept that broadly covers all web sites: "Users helping Users."

So how do we rationalize what would be of service to the clubs? I contend that we might want to try to get away from an imposed list of criteria and try to determine what each site is trying to accomplish by asking the website developers to tell us. Then, using their own criteria, we have the clubs evaluate how well they achieved their objectives... Teams of two or three people, hopefully other web developers, would give their eveluations of how the club met its own criteria, and comment on possible additional criteria might be considered to "round out" the offerings that could be provided... suggesting specific methodologies to achieve the proposed additional desirable goals and criteria. This gathering of experienced users could be of great help to other computer users.

The team would be instructed to heap lavish praise on those that deserve praise, with encouragement being the "by word" of the effort of all evaluators. The teams should refrain from "judging" but rather provide coaching to help meet unmet goals, always asking participants where their remaining challenges are and talking about ways to overcome the challenges. The teams would offer assistance to those who indicate they'd like it... and help to set up coaching methodologies to follow up on suggestions and stated goals. The process of thinking through web uses by other clubs, how to achieve logically organized, easy to access, informative web pages would be invaluable. This has value to experienced developers wanting to "freshen up" their sites... as we all must on a regular, if not frequent basis. This sounds like "Users Helping Users."

The central purpose of this type of event is to make cooperative improvement the object of the exercise. With multiple web developers offering assistance, it should be possible to achieve some of the ever-more-difficult features of web development concepts. One can't help but pick up some good tips. Nobody gets filleted and scewered. Everyone benefits and the level of all participants is elevated and celebrated. Participants leave the experience feeling, "Wow, this is really users helping users"! --- and membership grows because everyone is learning.

Pie in the sky? Maybe, but not in my experience. I have seen patient coaching win converts to the "Users Helping Users" philosophy. And people have been seeking me out to help with the projects we've placed before our club. Volunteers are actually stepping forward and asking to participate. That's gratifying and builds membership, fellowship, goodwill and longevity. At my age, anything that does these things is better than competition. People with diminishing capabilities and time don't have much truck with competitions. They do with cooperative, social ventures. I think it would be appropriate for APCUG to check the average age of the club members of member user groups. The clubs that I have visited have alot of gray-to-white hair... I wonder if that's one of the reasons I'm feeling older?? One more point that seems important to me. We are all volunteers. We are not in competition with one another, not any more. We are all about quality of life, not quantity. Occolades are far less important than simple expressions of appreciation... which eveybody needs... not just winners. Maybe it could be said, particularly not winners... If APCUG and its member clubs are having sustained membership problems, this change in direction might well be rejunerative. I keep thinking "Users Helping Users" has a certain ring to it.

Additional ruminations 12/2/07

Barbara Manning, you mentioned, at one point, the possible need for a discussion and recommendations about web development software, and I see that this could happen on three basic, yet very different levels. I think that most of us, as newbie webmasters, feel a certain rush to "get something up" quickly when we start, and then learn more and feel like we need to modify, update content, expand the content offerings, broaden the appeal, re-target our audience, etc. All of these things can happen, and do currently, and some concurrently. As a result, my web sites are only a snap-shots-in-time of what I'm trying to do. I see three levels descriptive of some needs here: 1) The "fast and dirty - throw it up there" initial approach, 2) The studied software-intensive level of do and redo, and 3) doing it "right" with writing html, css, PHP, Ruby-on-Rails, Java, Java-scripts, and whatever-else-works. I prefer the latter which implies digging enough to know what makes the pages format, so I can fix a problem, but not trying to become an "expert" at it. My guess is that nearly every one putting up web sites and pages of the various User Groups is in the range somewhere. I see any educational efforts/program needing to address the needs of these three groups.

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