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Minutes for Communications (SCCC) CommitteeMeeting date: 2008-02-05 Next meeting: 2008-03-11 These minutes have not yet been approved. Submitted by: John Wetherill Attendees:
Summary: Voted Larry as chairman. Discussed printer and computer in Whitaker hall, training Stephen and members on web use, calendar ownership, discussion forums, publishing items, and online database. Details
CHAIRPERSON
We voted Larry as the new chairperson for this committee
COMPUTER IN WHITAKER HALL
Stephen just bought a Mac latop, will return church-owned Dell latop to church. We can use this in Whitaker hall, as long as we cover the external glass door to the copy room with translucent covering.
PRINTER IN WHITAKER HALL
Nancy Jo: Should we get a duplex printer?
Mike: He has a laser printer to donate, will bring it in. We decided to go with that for now.
John G: Has a plethora of scanners. Will hold off for now.
Larry will ask Trustees about covering window in Moira's office
TRAINING STEPHEN
We need to train both Stephen and the church on use of the website. Stephen also needs to get an isp for home (not Compuserve) and a new email service.
John will give Stephen an email address on SkylandChurch.com (stephen@skylandchurch.com). Stephen will also get himself a gmail email address.
Training members: we can hold training sessions in Whitaker Hall. We tabled this discussion for later.
CALENDAR
John W requested owners for certain aspects of caledar, including flowers, coffee hour, and special services.
Larry: We should go to council: some committee must take ownership of each of these calendar aspects
Wes: Women's group is responsible for many of these items
Wes: Important note: people without email addresses won't get notifications.
Larry: will approach council: find owners for these aspects of calendar:
John W: will automate "next meeting" to populate calendar from minutes
Nancy Jo: Stephen currently reminds flower givers. He might be relieved to not have to do that anymore
JohnG: with computer here it would be easy to bring flower calendar downstairs and enter the data
DISCUSSION FORUMS
John W: What about members that don't have internet access?
John G: With computer in Whitaker Hall, people who want to access the web can now do so.
John W: How to increase exposure of forums:
Possibility: hook forum discussions to email
Also: should we have discussion forms for committees? For now we'll create a discussion forum for BCS, see how it goes.
PUBLISHING ITEMS FROM NANCY JO
Missions board is producing a book (Giving). Once a year, 25 copies?
Is our committee responsible for printing this? Or should missions pay for it?
Answer: money should come from missions committee or from BCS. Doesn't matter. In some cases it makes more sense to come from a specific committee. In others, it makes sense to come from BCS.
JohnG: We should put the book on the web in PDF format.
Larry: we need file structure on the website to store all documentation. Larry has a computer full of original documents.
Ideally, anyone should be able to download and view the documents.
Most of it should be wide open. Some docs could be private.
JohnG: Should be way to upload PDF files to server.
Problem: what format should files should be?
JohnW: Original file should be on site as well as PDF.
Wes: Committee or group should take ownership of files/docs
JohnG: use PDF (full acrobat) to edit documents.
Discussion: what format to store church documents in?
JohnG gave a very cool demo of his trial of scanning in the printed newsletter, OCRing it (Optical Character Recognition) then displaying it in fully searchable form in PDF, with hot links embedded throughout the document.
This is one possible way to make it easier to create the newsletter, currently being done in raw HTML (not the most elegant solution).
Nancy Jo: We need a "Printer Friendly" menu item so web pages, minutes, calendar, etc can be printed without navigation bar, headers, and footers.
John W: Action item: create "Printer Friendly" menu for each web page
Stephen: is there a way to download all the minutes?
John G: Mentioned and demo'd Adobe Web Capture: download and convert entire site to PDF
John W: there are other ways to capture a website in HTML (Mac freeware)
Nancy Jo: need HOW TO documents Nancy Jo: Should there be a book format of HOW TOs?
Nancy Jo: Who should own the budget for banners? Example: Harvest Festival Banner. budget for hf
Larry: Doesn't matter - it has to come from the church anyway.
JohnW: makes sense to have budget as part of (say) Harvest Festival so it's easier to track expenses.
Nancy Jo: Is photography part of this group?
John W: Yes. Need photos of lots more members. Some members can upload, but would be nice if Nancy Jo could also take photos.
Larry: Maybe during potlucks.
Stephen: Is there a way to have categories for how-tos? Website becomes place for accumulated wisdom of church.
Larry: Planning on putting the manuals with the how-tos
John W: Action item: create an "upload page" for documents (like the photo album) allowing people to submit documents (original and PDF version) including caption, abstract, author, date, etc.
Wes: How do we maintain Church Bylaws? Who are the owners? Who can modify?
JohnW: proposed "document upload page" solution should solve this problem.
REMOVE NON MEMBERS FROM SEARCHABLE DATABASE
There are three categories from old database:
Members Friends Booklet (want to be in phonebook)
Larry: Absolutely essential: The list of members should be owned by Deacons, not us.
Stephen: will tell Deacons they should take ownership, once we're ready with the database (hold off for a couple of weeks)
MISC
Larry: Can BCS as a group eliminate or reduce some of the meetings?
JohnW: Let's create a discussion forum for BCS.
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