All - A great friend of mine, and loyal ARRL member, Scott Westerman W9WSW (VP of Comcast for New Mexico and Arizona and a reporter for This Week in Amateur Radio) and I chatted about the upcoming ARRL website redesign project. Scott wades in this kind of stuff every day as part of his career and for fun, so I trust his views. Rather than being just a casual web user, he actually DOES this and knows about it from a year-2008 marketing and promotional standpoint. I offer his unedited words of advice as food-for-thought for the ODV or the upcoming board meeting, and for the benefit of ARRL's soon to be improved presence on the web (see below). Perhaps this can be a part of future conversations with our chosen web design company. 73, Brian N5ZGT Director, ARRL Rocky Mountain Division ============================================================= Email from Scott W9WSW: To follow up on our dinner conversation this week, here are a few humble thoughts about leveraging the Internet at the League. An able web design house can create an appealing and usable portal for the League and deploy search engine optimization techniques to get it noticed on Google and Yahoo. These days that's website 101. Extending ARRL.org's reach beyond the base site should be part of any proposal you receive. Here are some ideas: The new reality of the Web: "People want to consume their content, at their convenience the device of their choice." It's important to keep this in mind as you consider a communication strategy. Think beyond traditional websites, to cell phones and social networks, to Chumbys and Twitter. You should make your content available to every possible medium. The key is RSS, alternately defined as "really simple syndication" or "rich site summary". Deploying content in this format makes it easily assimilated into just about any display engine. Learn more about how RSS works here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format) A key take-away - Each of the important sections of your website should have an RSS feed. Use ARRL.org to enhance the QST experience: Printing costs limit the amount of information we can share in the magazine. Use your web presence to allow members read expand versions of QST's content, with more data, more words and more pictures and graphics. An example: In QST equipment reviews, allow the user to take a 360 degree visual tour of the rig, spinning it around with the mouse. Open the top of the radio and let the viewer zoom in to the circuit boards. Put MP3 files of the rig audio outputs on the site and flash video of the wave forms as they cross the scope. Rendering the website on multiple devices: You're off to a good start with the mobile edition. Think of enhancing it in a version for the IPhone. It's also possible to put some code on the main page that reads the browser type and renders the content specifically for the browser automatically. This is typically done to identify the dozen different cell phone browsers to maximize the quality of the experience on that device. Blogging: Part of your web presence should be a blog that one or many of the league staff contributes to. "It seems to us", Sean's contest news, interpretations of FCC actions, even "the doctor is in", translate well to this approach. With categories and RSS feeds for each author, readers can do their own filtering and the blogs can be updated as developments warrant. The blog differs from the front page news on the site in that it allows the League to put a human face on amateur radio's most important advocates. Social Networks: Once a bastion of primarily the young, networks like MySpace and the more ubiquitous Facebook are garnering followers of all age. Facebook has a group feature that is tailor-made for the League. If you explore the groups, you'll see that some folks have taken it upon themselves to reach out. There's a Field Day group and an interesting Young Assistant Section Manager group. Having an officially sanctioned presence is another way to reach out to both current and potential hams. Recruit volunteers who know this space lead the charge. Twitter and Friend Feed: The hottest new - new things are the microblogs. At www.twitter.com <http://www.twitter.com/> , you have 140 characters to speak your piece.. Sounds a lot like packet radio. It's a phenomenon that, like a DX Cluster, has become a popular way for friends to exchange hot news in real time. At Comcast, we've discovered that it's a great way to seek out customer issues and provide instant response. Think of a twitter feed specifically tracking 20 meter DX, as a way for section managers to communicate, an augmentation for weather spotters or perhaps something integrated with APRS or Packet, where your over the air message weather message can be relayed to on-line followers. Friend Feed is an aggregation engine where you can read RSS feeds, share links and write comments. The League should have an ARRL room on FriendFeed where hams can share information and opinion. Chumby and beyond: As new devices are born, the League should encourage developers to help place key ARRL information there. One example is the Chumby (www.chumby.com <http://www.chumby.com/> ). Ostensibly a wifi video device, Chumby can play flash widgets, audio and video streams and podcasts. Still in its infancy, it's used to display everything from weather information to EDIS alerts. It can format an RSS feed to display ARRL headlines, pictures, etc. in ways limited only by your imagination and ability to write code. Content alliances: Survey your membership to see which web applications are their favorites. My two current faves are the awesome Google Earth MUF display and the DX Summit website. How could we develop hooks into these two resources to display the MUF information graphically in a Java app on the league website, on a Chumby, or on a cell phone? Why not include a flash application on the League home page that refreshes every three minutes with the latest DX Cluster Information from DX Summit? Incorporate links to ham content on YouTube and podcasts, too. Think about what is most valuable to your members and find a way to include it, enhance it, or re-invent it. Instant Messaging: Part of the Division and Section contact information should be an Instant Messaging address. With universal communicators like. www.meebo.com <http://www.meebo.com/> , it's not critical to choose a single platform like AOL Instant Messenger or Google Talk, but sharing that information is another way that members can have meaningful dialog with leadership. A natural initial reaction to all of this is, "how much will it cost and who will do it?" My friend Rob Curley faced the same challenge as he set about transforming the website of newspaper where he worked. He was able to do it with most of his current staff, without major incremental expense. It turned out that new revenue streams more than paid for the enhancements. All it requires is creative thinking and open minds. One of the things that makes our hobby at once both wonderful and excruciating is that we often have a split personality:. We are at the forefront of innovation but also resist change. Where member communication is concerned, the reality is that the young are moving away from the printed page and won't wait for the next month's issue. If we can make our content portable, relevant, up to the minute and easy to find and use, that can help grow membership and take us several steps closer to a more intimate relationship with those we serve. Hope these thoughts are helpful! W9WSW