Wednesday, Feb 16 2011 - Needles Hall (NH) 3001 - 3:00 pm
Present:
Lara Babalola, Marta Bailey, Mary Lynn Benninger, Michelle Douglas-Mills, Sarah Forgrave, Guillermo Fuentes, Jaymis Goertz, Pat Lafranier, Christine Liebig, Tammy Marcinko, Paul Miskovsky, Isaac Morland, Kris Olafson, Kayleigh Platz (guest), Ellen Réthoré (guest), Terry Stewart (Chair), Kelley Teahen, Evan Truong, Chris Francis, Chris Gray, Marlon Griffith, and Wendy Philpott
Absent:
Don Duff-McCracken, Eva Grabinski, Lauren Harrison, Adam Hewgill, Karen Jack, John Kemp, Megan McDermott, Kevin Paxman and Jonathan Woodcock
1. Chair's remarks
Welcome to guests, Ellen Réthoré and Kayleigh Platz
Welcome back to Chris Francis who will be taking Janet Janes' place representing the Office of Research. Thanks to Janet for her contributions.
Regrets from Eva Grabinski, Donald Duff-McCracken, Jonathan Woodcock, Kevin Paxman and Megan McDermott.
Announcement from Web Steering Committee: "We understand there are many questions about the process and resourcing of migration to the new web design within the new Content Management System (CMS). Plans are underway centrally to provide some direction for migration as well as some guidance in determining what resources will be necessary for the units on campus with responsibility for web communications. A related project is also underway to plan the best approach to managing, leveraging and using the web and other digital tools for marketing and communications long term."
Congratulations to Meg Beckel and her team for winning an International Gold Medal in the "institutional identity" program. Congratulations, as well, to the Alumni Affairs office who also won awards for alumni involvement in student recruitment.
The Web Advisory Committee mailing list has been locked down to the Moderators to avoid spam. Terry and Pat will review the material being posted, so members are asked to note that it may take a bit longer for uploading.
2. Approval of January 19, 2011 Minutes - approved as distributed
3. Introduction of Ellen Réthoré, Associate Vice President, Communications and Public Affairs (CPA)
Welcome and introductions around the table. Ellen spoke about what is on the horizon for the next five years and what planning will need go into it. The department is working heavily with the visual identity program and in particular social media.
From discussions with the Steering Committee, Ellen and her team have been tasked with two issues.
- Lack of clarity - how do we move things over and what support will be provided? Centrally or do departments use their own resources?
- What does the future look like; and how we keep up to date and stay strategic, dynamic and collaborative to sustain the large volume of work that has already been done on the web re-design? By the next meeting, Ellen will have had a chance to speak to Alan George to discuss what the framework will look like.
The Chair inquired about what Ellen might see WAC being able to assist with. (i.e., what can WAC do to advise or help the team along the path)? Ellen reported that advising is the best and most helpful at the moment, coupled with discussions with the students and student groups.
4. Social Media Policy at University of Waterloo
Kayleigh walked the committee through the guidelines for Social Media when representing the University of Waterloo.
The guidelines currently only apply to staff and faculty. There has been interest from the Federation of Students in adopting the guidelines.
All groups, departments and individuals are asked to complete the brief first and sent to CPA for further approval. The brief is simple to complete and does not take a lot of time; nor CPA turnaround. Policies 33, 66 and 73 have been built into the guidelines and all members are asked to adhere to these policies. Kayleigh stressed that when representing University of Waterloo; social media must remain positive, clean and transparent. These include, but are not limited to, blogs, Twitter and Facebook.
Two questions: 1. Is CPA looking at retroactive briefs for already existing pages? Yes, but not at this time. The team has been able to capture a lot of existing pages but too many to go through, some inactive for years. 2. What visual identity components might/will be built into the pages or be available? Creative Services is working on this at the moment and will be a subsection of the re-design team. The official use is still a work in progress.
5. Web redesign (Sarah Forgrave)
Phasing. The working marks for the phasing protocol for faculties, departments and schools will be released within the week.
Design. The CMS team's next step is web migrating content. There will be a static home page up and running on February 28. The redesign team is looking for feedback. Usability testing - background and information architecture will be completed concurrently. Anew fav.ico will be available on webops.uwaterloo.ca website soon. Megan will make an announcement.
6. Waterloo CMS update (Terry Stewart)
In Eva's absence, she sent along two announcements:
Demo of the pilot housing site will be held on Friday (February 18) 9-10 am in Davis Centre (DC) 1302.
Liam Morland from Centre for Extended Learning (CEL) has joined Information Systems and Technology (IST) and has been assigned to the CMS project
7. Web Strategy Governance and Policy Committee update (Mary Lynn Benninger)
Members of the working group met last Friday to discuss how to best provide direction and to create some principals for defining and going forward.
Action: Mary Lynn will send the 2 page document URL - Defining Web Governance
8. Other business
Social media icons
In Kevin's absence, Terry presented Kevin's PowerPoint slide deck. It has also been posted at the Web Advisory home page. Kevin is looking for comments and feedback on the proposed social media icons.
Discussion
Are the designs to be used or are these just templates to personalize? How are they integrated?
Is there a guide for official icons or can the same icon with different wording be used?
Does this meet the needs of the faculties particularly with the backgrounds?
It is clear that we are staying with the "W" - this limits the choices
Will these be publicly available or are each individually designed?
Mandated versus recommended? This item was tabled forward to next meeting for further discussion when Kevin will be present.