Thursday, March 12, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Present:
Allan Bell, Andrew Smith, Clint MacDonald, Eva Grabinski, Geoff McBoyle (acting chair), Guillermo Fuentes, Kelley Teahen, Marlon Griffith, Michelle Douglas-Mills, Pat Lafranier, Sarah Forgrave, Terry Stewart, David Bean, Mary Lynn Benninger, Sean van Koughnett, Meg Beckel (guest), Tammy Marcinko, Don Duff-McCracken, Lauren Harrison, Paul Miskovsky, Kris Olafson, Jason Greatrex (minutes)
Regrets:
Isaac Morland, Mary Jane Jennings, Karen Jack, Jim Johnston, Kevin Paxman, Megan McDermott, Tobi Day-Hamilton, Jaymis Goertz
1. Opening remarks
Geoff McBoyle acting chair today only.
2. Branding initiative
Meg Beckel and Sean van Koughnett gave a Visual Identity System presentation on brand architecture and visual expression. The presentation concluded with questions and reactions from the audience. * Many members provided positive feedback on the logo and its colour schemes. * The majority preferred the master brand’s full use of colours over black and gold, and the black, gold, red, and white examples. * The logo stood out well in comparison to other University examples. * The survey group’s responses matched the logo’s objectives. * Some concerns: * An aspect of randomness and chaos from the lines lack of a central focal point. * Possible usability and accessibility issues when using faculty specific colours. * Each department within the faculty may want their own identity (colour); therefore, six colours may not work. * What is in place to maintain the same identity as we bridge between old and new brands? * Prepared to evaluate different colours, hues, and iterations as they shift over time. * Wordmarks and their layers will be addressed, reworked and updated. * Communications and Public Affairs (CPA) will be consulted to discuss and evaluate the web branding implications. * One more Visual Identity System presentation is scheduled for Executive Council. * The proposed fall roll-out phase scheduled for across campus will be incremental due to cost factors. *
Meg mentioned the Web Steering Committee will be composed of Alan George, Sean van Koughnett,Martin van Nierop, Meg Beckel.
3. Customer centric index survey
Kelley Teahen summarized the Customer Centric Index survey results. The free survey by Bob Johnson and Gerry McGovern provided focus areas and key concepts to target. Survey information will not be made available on the Twiki website, a copy of the electronic presentation will be made available to Web Advisory Members-only. (Post-meeting: on March 16th, Megan McDermott emailed WAC members a copy of the presentation slides).
4. Update on Waterloo Content Management System (WCMS) Project
Terry Stewart provided an overview and reviewed the project goal of the Content Management System (CMS) project. The project is broken down into three subgroups: 1 Needs assessment subgroup chaired by Megan McDermott 2 Technology assessment subgroup chaired by Terry Stewart 3 Communications subgroup chaired by Pat Lafranier. These have been active groups, meeting weekly. The needs assessment subgroup used focus group results obtained from an online campus survey. The results were made available to University Committee on Information Systems and Technology (UCIST) and at the WatITis conference. The majority responded positively towards Dreamweaver, Contribute and the current templates, but expressed a lack of functionality as a level of frustration. The technology assessment subgroup started with 1000 Web Content Management Systems, these packages were evaluated based on certain key criteria which resulted in the following three packages: 1 Open source – Drupal 1 Commercial (education-focused) - Cascade Server by Hannon Hill 1 Commerical (general) - RedDot by Open Text Information and training sessions were held by Open Text (!RedDot), Hannon Hill (Cascade Server), and Acquia (Drupal) to evaluate these software packages. Instances of all three products have been installed on test servers by Information Systems and technology (IST) systems group. Announcement of a product is expected by 2nd quarter 2009.
5. Concluding remarks
Terry Stewart has accepted the offer to be WAC chair from Alan George and Meg Beckel, which has been vacant since Paul Snyder’s retirement.
Meetings will be scheduled regularly on the 3rd Wednesday, of each month. * Please send agenda items to Terry (stewart AT Uwaterloo.ca).
* The meeting adjourned at 4:30 pm. *
-- Jason Greatrex - 13 Mar 2009