Web Advisory Committee (WAC) Meeting

Wednesday, July 15, 2009 - Biology 1 (B1) 266

Present:

David Bean, Allen Bell, Mary Lynn Benninger, Mike Borkowski (Guest), Michelle Douglas-Mills, Sarah Forgrave, Guillermo Fuentes, Eva Grabinski, Marlon Griffith, Lauren Harrison, John Kemp, Pat Lafranier, Tammy Marcinko, Geoff McBoyle, Megan McDermott Paul Miskovsky, Isaac Morland, Kris Olafson, Kevin Paxman, Terry Stewart (Chair), Kelly Teahen, Evan Truong and Shawn Winnington-Ball (Guest)

Absent:

Tobi Day-Hamilton, Don Duff-McCracken, Bob Hicks, Karen Jack, Jaymis Goertz, Jim Johnston, and Sean Van Koughnett

1. Chair's remarks

a. New members

i. Graduate Studies Office (GSO) is interviewing for a Communications and Web Manager this month. The successful candidate will represent GSO at future meetings.

b. Past events

i. Web-squared: O'Reilly, Thursday, June 25 - 1-2 pm. There were some interesting notions, especially with regards to what one can gather about a web visitor and custom tailoring their experience. ii. Pat has met with Organizational and human Development (OHD) regarding funding activities such as webinars. Pat reported that OHD is just waiting to announce.

c. Upcoming events

i. Eduweb at Doubletree Chicago - July 20-22, 2009 - Pat Lafranier and Lisa Tomalty-Crans will be attending. [[http://www.eduwebconference.com/index.php][www.eduwebconference.com/index.php]]

d. Web Content Management System (CMS)

-The vendor now has the press release and University of Waterloo is waiting for it to be returned.

e. Memo from the President

- everyone should have received the memo from David Johnston and Meg Beckel regarding the Marketing Communications Update.

f. *University of Waterloo Common Look and Feel -*

g. IT Task Force report

- Geoff McBoyle reported that there have been no further comments and Alan George is taking the reins for the next phase.

h. Internet Explorer 8

- Information Systems and Technology (IST) is compiling a web page for IE8 issues. http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/istwweb/ie8problems.html

i. The updated template will be on WebOps soon.

Only new sites will be using this template and if there are any problems; report to WebOps. ii. The Campaign Waterloo logo ("Building a Talent Trust"), located in the University of Waterloo common Look and feel (CLF) footer, has been changed. As long as the file is being linked to the central file, no modification is necessary.

2. Minutes of June 17, 2009 approved

3. Business arising from minutes
E-commerce  

- It may be possible to "pair up" with other departments or units who have been approved for e-commerce activities. An example would be an alumni event with registration hosted through Office of Development and Alumni Afairs (ODAA).

4. Report on new info.uwaterloo.ca (Mike Borkowski & Shawn Winnington-Ball)  

IST will be moving info.uwaterloo.ca to new hardware. It will be a Red Hat Enterprise Linux, running Apache 2.x and PHP 5.2.4. The current info is an xhiered Solaris system, running Apache 1.3 and PHP 5. There are a number of reasons for this. In particular, the new system will be capable of being clustered giving redundancy and disaster recovery advantages. Clustering will happen at a future date. Currently, Mike and Shawn are working on a "mirrored" copy of the server for testing. Simple web pages have all been moved successfully. PHP files will be more difficult but are expected to be working in time for the move. CNAMES have been created to allow stakeholders to test their own sites (eg, infodev-housing.uwaterloo.ca). The IP address of info will remain the same so there will be a short period of time when the main pages will be unavailable. The proposed date for this transition is the morning of August 23, 2009. Any questions or for more information, please contact [[mailto:mikeb@ist.uwaterloo.ca?subject=mikeb@ist.uwaterloo.ca][Mike]] or [[mailto:swball@ist.uwaterloo.ca?subject=swball@ist.uwaterloo.ca][Shawn]].

5. 'University of Waterloo social networking report (Megan McDermott)  

Megan has been compiling a Facebook "inventory". You Tube also contains a lot of videos from Waterloo and Megan is looking into setting up a "channel" which will allow Waterloo to manage this channel and customize. The Secretariat is currently working with Facebook to get back ownership of the group uwaterloo.ca. University of Waterloo is attempting to use Facebook as a tool to announce events - student life, registrar's, Q&A, etc. Instructional Technology Advisory Group (ITAC) is currently looking at Social Networking as well.

6. University of Waterloo branding (Kelle y Teah en)  

The visual identity framework is ready and will be rolled out soon. A second memo to follow up the one sent by David and Meg is scheduled within the next month with a Town Hall meeting scheduled at the end of October. When Waterloo Magazine is published in late November, the common look and feel will be included.

University of Waterloo banners are being hung along the University of Waterloo campus shortly. The banners will be University of Waterloo on black and then each faculty's colours. Gotham is the chosen font and IST is in the process of purchasing a license for 3000 users. Blue - Engineering; purple blue - Science; pink - Math; orange - Arts; green - Environment; and green blue - Applied Health Sciences (AHS). Red will represent professional school and the colleges have not chosen to participate at this time.

January 2010 is the intended timeframe for matching stationary and start of conversion of web pages. There is a possibility that a team will be put together (thru secondments) to assist wil the conversion of  pages to the new identity.

7. Advertisements on University of Waterloo web pages (Kelley Teahen) 

Nothing to report at this time, this item will be tabled to a further agenda.

8. DNS Resolution Policy sub-committee

Jim sent regrets for this meeting - this item is slated for the next meeting.

9. New Developments with search and events (Megan McDermott).

a. Events.

Functionality is now available to pull in events from Waterloo events to your own site. This uses a RESTful Application Program Interface (API). Larger areas can request to have their own calendar on Waterloo events. In your own calendar you have the ability to approve/reject events from your stream and pull those events into your site. See an example on the Engineering site

b. Search.

Postponed until next meeting due to lack of time. Please see: http://web.uwaterloo.ca/story/update-uw-search-application.
 

*Meeting adjourned - 4:30 pm*

- TerryStewart - 31 Jul 2009