Dave,
 
I understand what you are saying.  On the other hand, the website has been a  topic constantly brought up by members in the GLD (if nowhere else).  I have attempted to remain positive in the tone of my replies to comments and inquiries while simultaneously being honest in my replies.  Because many members have asked to be kept aware of major changes regarding the site I plan to advise them of the change in management of it through my monthly e-newsletter.  You are likely to see it for release in a day or two, I will be very factual in a statement..
 
My plan is simply to state that website development general management has been shifted to you, and that daily management of the work is being done by the IT Department under the direction of Jon Blum.
 
I will avoid making judgmental statements.
 
If you see a problem with anything in this approach, I am open to discussing it.
 
Tnx,
 
Jim
 
 
Jim Weaver, K8JE, Director
ARRL Great Lakes Division
5065 Bethany Rd.
Mason, OH 45040; Tel. 513-459-1661
ARRL, The national association for Amateur Radio
 

From: Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ [mailto:dsumner@arrl.org]
Sent: Friday, October 29, 2010 3:43 PM
To: arrl-odv
Subject: [arrl-odv:19474] RE: [arrl-odv:19471] Web project status report

Jim, it’s not a secret and you’re certainly free to mention it if a member brings up to the subject, but I don’t see any point in broadcasting it.

 

Dave

 

 

From: Jim Weaver K8JE [mailto:K8JE@ARRL.org]
Sent: Friday, October 29, 2010 3:38 PM
To: arrl-odv
Subject: RE: [arrl-odv:19471] Web project status report

 

Dave,

 

First, thank you.  Next, based on the assumption that the change in management for the website project is common knowledge throughout HQ, am I correct that it is also OK to let members know  of the change?

 

Tnx,

 

Jim

 

Jim Weaver, K8JE, Director

ARRL Great Lakes Division

5065 Bethany Rd.

Mason, OH 45040; Tel. 513-459-1661

ARRL, The national association for Amateur Radio

 

 

From: Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ [mailto:dsumner@arrl.org]
Sent: Friday, October 29, 2010 2:55 PM
To: arrl-odv
Subject: [arrl-odv:19471] Web project status report

Web Project Status Report

October 29, 2010

To the Board of Directors

Last week I assumed project leadership responsibility for completing the implementation of the current ARRL Web site. I promised weekly reports; here is the first.

The previous week I met individually with most of the ARRL personnel who are involved with the project day to day. After announcing the change to the other department managers I called Brent Robertson of Fathom to let him know; Brent assured me of his full cooperation and that of his firm.

Early on I came to the conclusion that responsibility for administering the Bugzilla system used by ARRL and Fathom to track issues in the website ought to reside in the IT Department rather than with Katie Glass. Katie’s primary function is to help those of us who are responsible for Web content rather than to deal with technical issues. Katie and Jon Bloom fully agreed, and on October 21 Jon announced to staff that Maureen Farmer henceforth will be the principal administrator of the Bugzilla system. Katie will still enter and update bugs when she needs to. Maureen is also now the administrative point of contact with Fathom for bug-fix and other programming matters. Maureen was not on staff when the new Web site was launched but has now been here for four months; I’m glad she is able to take this on. Maureen immediately reviewed the outstanding bugs, cleaned out a number of them and reassigned several others. We are scheduling a meeting of ARRL IT and Fathom staff for next week to review all open bugs and what is needed to close them out. I will attend that meeting as part of my education but do not intend to insert myself into the communication between the respective technical staffs at Fathom and the ARRL.

Observant regular visitors to the Web will have noticed that there is now a “quick link” feature at the top of the home page that provides direct links to popular and important pages. This was in the works already; I’m glad we were able to go live with it this week. Another, more subtle change was made the previous week to darken the font used for text throughout the site. Several attendees at last Saturday’s Executive Committee meeting said they had noticed an improvement in readability.

I am still making my way up the learning curve about the site and learn more every day. At this point my major concerns fall into two categories:

1. Training. Overall we have a pretty good handle on the content management system although some staff members are more comfortable with it than others. We have the ability to address this in-house. On the other hand, ARRL staff does not yet have as clear an understanding as we need of how to use the administrative tools to manage, for example, who gets to view which pages. Next week I hope to get a better idea of how much this is a training issue and how much has to do with deficiencies in the administrative tools themselves.

2. Siebel-to-Web (and vice versa) data communication issues. These lie at the heart of many of our ongoing problems and are particularly daunting because they require an in-depth understanding of both systems. Particularly now that our two new programmers Maureen and Dennis Budd are on staff, our IT department is coming up to speed on the Web side.

David Sumner, K1ZZ – Chief Executive Officer

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Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 10.0.1153 / Virus Database: 424/3225 - Release Date: 10/28/10