Volunteer needed for job postings on BLU web site

[jabr at blu.org (John Abreau)]

On Thu, 17 Feb 2000, Anthony J. Gabrielson wrote:

> John,
> 	I can do that if you want.
> 
> Anthony

Thanks, Anthony. Peter Farrar already picked up that job; however, we
could use other help on the web site. I've mostly been focusing on keeping
the meeting listings updated, and the rest of the site may be getting a
bit stale.

As a first attempt at listing what's needed, I'm looking at the links off
our home page. I've been meaning to build a list of volunteer tasks for
a long time; now is as good a time as any to start.

* News - This has been empty forever; in theory it should have been for
timely announcements, news items of interest to BLU members, etc. 

* Meetings - This has been where I've focused most of my attention; I
always keep the database for this up-to-date.

* Notes - This is where I drop meeting notes and meeting reports when we
get those. This doesn't need much maintenance, although we can always use
more content for it. David Kramer has supplied his meeting notes going
back to 1998.

* Photos - I've dropped a lot of photos of meetings, trade shows, etc
under here; they could certainly use better formatting.

* Directions - This could probably be improved tremendously. Since our
meeting room moves around from month to month, I basically gave directions
from various modes of travel to the East Garage on Vassar Street, and then
separate sets of directions from the East Garage to each of the rooms
we've met in.

* FAQ - Mostly I've been archiving stuff from the mailing lis that struck
me as worth highlighting for posterity. Again, an overhaul here is
probably in order.

* Linux Cafe - This provides details on our annual summer bbq and our
other sporadic social gatherings; not much maintenance needed here.

* Installfests - Jerry and Blake have been working on scheduling the
Installfests lately, and they maintain this info page.

* Volunteers - In theory this should be at least a list of volunteer
positions we seek to fill, and ideally a forum for volunteers to
coordinate their activities. 

* Mail Lists - This describes our majordomo lists and provides links to
the list archives. Nothing much needed here.

* Flea Market - Bill Horne was maintaining this, but he's stepping down
now. Looks like it hasn't seen much activity anyway.

* Jobs Market - Again, Bill Horne was maintaining this. This section was
much more active, and Peter Farrar has offered to take over for Bill.

* About BLU - This is fairly static; not much to update here.

* BCS - This is essentially a memorial plaque to our parent community, the
Boston Computer Society, which dissolved in late 1996.

* Other Links - Nobody really maintains this; occasionally one of us adds
or updates something, or deletes a dead link if someone points it out. I
suppose it would help to have someone check it periodically.


On a larger scope, there are a number of projects on my wish list that I
haven't had time to pursue:

* PHP - This would be useful for dome dynamic content. For one thing, it
would enable us to maintain the masthead graphic and links in a single
place, instead of separately for every page on the server. Beyond that, it
would be nice to provide a simpler interface to the meetings and events
database, and would likely improve performance over the cgi script we
currently use.

* Slashcode - Now that the slashdot code has been released, we could set
up a similar weblog on our server as a member and volunteer forum.

Does any of this interest you?

--
John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix 
Email: jabr at blu.org / URL: http://www.blu.org
ICQ#28611923 / AIM abreauj
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