Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - Needles Hall (NH) 3001
White Whale Web Services Research and Discovery Visit
Present:
Lara Babalola, Marta Bailey, David Bean, Mary Lynn Benninger, Janice Cooke, Michelle Douglas-Mills, Don Duff-McCracken, Sarah Forgrave, Jaymis Goertz, Eva Grabinski, Marlon Griffith, Lauren Harrison, Karen Jack, Jim Johnston, John Kemp, Pat Lafranier, Tammy Marcinko, Geoff McBoyle, Paul Miskovsky, Isaac Morland, Kris Olafson, Kevin Paxman, Wendy Philpott, Terry Stewart (Chair), Kelley Teahen, Evan Truong and Jonathan Woodcock
Absent:
Chris Francis, Guillermo Fuentes, Chris Grey, Adam Hewgill, and Brenda MacDonald Guests: Jason Pontius, Tonya Langford, Janie Porche and Donald Tetto - White Whale Web Services
1. Chair's remarks
Membership - Sean Van Koughnett has stepped down from WAC and welcome back to Jim Johnston.
2. Minutes of December 16, 2009 - Approved
3. White Whale Web Services
The Chair welcomed the members of the team from White Whale Web Services (WWWS) and turned the floor over the President, Jason Pontius. WWWS has experience in working with several universities and colleges but work on no more than two to three primary jobs at one time.This January visit is the first phase (research and discovery) as the panel works to understand learn as much as possible as it can about University of Waterloo - the issues affecting the university community, including students and get a sense of the current architecture/structure and how we are currently navigating our website(s).
Q&A and discussion:
What are the deliverables / standards compliance that is being considered? The goal is to have these by the third week in August - what Waterloo is about and how to quickly find this out while navigating through "our" pages. The end result will be to come to University's site without any knowledge and get to know University of Waterloo immediately while navigating throughout.
What will be the role of the individual faculties categorizing on the site? It is intended that the sites will have easier pathways - user paths and here's how to get there. _What about Waterloo's decentralized model; how are you planning to address it, recognizing that there are silos, duplication of information, co-sponsored departments/units/faculties even other universities (inter-disciplinary/pan-disciplinary), etc. There will be a need to consolidate - there is a lot of overlap and some do not know that the same things are going on or happening (e.g., accounting courses in the Faculty of Math versus the Professional Accounting program). This is a conceptual or organizational issues when the organizational structure becomes the web architecture, it becomes a problem. Want to look at the site from the perspective of the user. Current structuring of the web does not allow for different audience focuses. The silos are definitely an issue - history is difficult to overcome as it affects funding, allocating responsibilities, etc. As well, the Church Colleges are involved in many inter-disciplinary programs which need to be considered.
What about the current technology infrastructure? Will it have to change? The question is who should be managing what information. It is not the intention to remove positions - but to allow for easier web content management.
What is your timeline? Three parts to the exercise: 1) interact with the Waterloo community and understand it as much as possible; 2) develop information architecture and design; 3) provide a look and feel with flexible templates, homepage templates, etc.
Commentary. Our web current situation grew organically. Departments built their own server technology and information architecture as needed. The Gold Standard and current Common Look and Feel (CLF) were adopted variously about campus There was no top-down mandate. Departments could potentially "balk" at mandated branding or a common, look and feel. It is the hope that the WWWS team will build a "very large carrot" creating institutional momentum that will make the project a success. Federated businesses have massive research influence on campus and should be maintained. The target audience is prospective students but logically a prospective student will also take a look at what is available for current students and probably all aspects of the university to see what is going on at Waterloo.
Question from WWWS: Are there examples of web sites that members of WAC like? Members want clean look - white background, black lettering-not too busy. Brock, Toronto, Yale (Department of Public Affairs) are examples of user friendly and well structured websites.
Where can we find out more? The project charter will be shared on web.uwaterloo.ca in the near future.
4. Next Meeting -
Wednesday, February 18, 2010 - 3:00-4:30 pm - NH 3001
Meeting adjourned - 4:30 pm
-- TerryStewart - 05 Feb 2010