Friday, March 10, 2006
Team Meeting
Yesterday we had a fourth team meeting to follow on from the meeting that we had on 12th December. Mike was absent, but we decided to go ahead with the meeting anyway. Here's what we noted/discussed/agreed.
I reported that I was planning to request a continuation of the same website team formation for the coming 2006/7 academic year. I've already asked Geoff about the possibility of having another placement student next year, and he seemed to be happy with that idea. James confirmed that he is happy to continue working at the same resourcing/commitment level next year. After the meeting I asked Mike about this too; he also confirmed that he is happy to continue working at the same resourcing/commitment level - although in his case the situation is complicated by the fact that he's spending a lot of time on other web development projects for the Faculty, such as the new MSc project uploading system. The figure of 1.5 days/week for the BCIM website work isn't enough to cover his work on these other projects as well. I will try to get Geoff's approval for our 2006/7 resourcing levels when a suitable opportunity arises. However, given that the Faculty has just announced the need for a substantial number of redundancies, I guess that any decision about resourcing levels may need to be postponed for a while.
Progress Reports:
- Martin...
- I referred to my last progress report, and said that I've been doing more of the same - i.e. lots of bits and pieces, but nothing in particular worth reporting or discussing!
- James (sent to me after the meeting by email for inclusion here)...
- National Bakery School; This is a work in progress. James has had a meeting with NBS about a month ago in which valuable feedback from NBS was obtained. The majority of the work is completed. To do - layout of images and complete the contact form.
- Missing and Broken Links; Xenu's Link Sleuth was used to search though broken and missing links in the Faculty web-pages. James has been going through the list of links and taken action to edit/remove links and documents. He plans a monthly 'run' of Xenu in order to minimise 'broken' links.
- Friends of the Faculty; Work in progress, meetings with Roger S. have taken place. Rough ideas of content have been sketched out.
- Imran (sent to me after the meeting by email for inclusion here)...
- Since our last meeting I have been focusing on two projects. The first of which is the new Language Centre website. The new site is now complete and a date has been set to make the new site live. The Language Centre team have seen the new site, and the feedback from them has been very positive.
- The second project that I have been working on is concerned with producing a basic content management system for course directors, allowing them to maintain their own course pages. I have currently produced a prototype in order to gain an idea as to what the page will look like, and how the editable elements will work. I have managed to get some parts of the system working, however there is still a lot more that needs to be done.
I reported that I was planning to request a continuation of the same website team formation for the coming 2006/7 academic year. I've already asked Geoff about the possibility of having another placement student next year, and he seemed to be happy with that idea. James confirmed that he is happy to continue working at the same resourcing/commitment level next year. After the meeting I asked Mike about this too; he also confirmed that he is happy to continue working at the same resourcing/commitment level - although in his case the situation is complicated by the fact that he's spending a lot of time on other web development projects for the Faculty, such as the new MSc project uploading system. The figure of 1.5 days/week for the BCIM website work isn't enough to cover his work on these other projects as well. I will try to get Geoff's approval for our 2006/7 resourcing levels when a suitable opportunity arises. However, given that the Faculty has just announced the need for a substantial number of redundancies, I guess that any decision about resourcing levels may need to be postponed for a while.
Our future plans include - in a nutshell - the following...
- finish new NBS website (James)
- create new Friends of the Faculty web page/site (James)
- finish new Language Centre website (Imran)
- develop Course Home Page CMS (Imran)
- ongoing StudentWeb maintenance and development (Mike)
- ongoing StaffWeb maintenance and development (Martin)
- ongoing external BCIM website maintenance and development (Martin & Mike)
- post info about our joint Hons courses on our external website (Martin)
- create online versions of Resource Office forms as requested (Mike)
- revise the alternative home page for re-posting during the July/August/September recruitment season (who?)