Content Management Systems Minutes April 4, 2008

Web Content Management Systems (CMS)

Minutes of meeting held Friday, April 4 at 2:30

Present: Megan, Eva, Terry, Pat, Guillermo, Paul

Regrets: Chris, Gary

1. Adminstrative items

  1. Meeting times - will plan to meet weekly at least at the start of the project; plan for 1 1/2 hours but may finish before. Eva to use Bookit to schedule meetings and will attempt to find a regular time that works with everyone's schedule. Math and Computer (MC)1058 is a convenient location.
  2. Need to work around vacation schedules; send Eva your vacation plans.
  3. No one likes taking minutes so we'll take turns; Paul offered to post to wiki.
  4. Project will use Web Advisory wiki as Web site.
  5. Eva distributed a document that contained the original charter and sections to be discussed and developed. This will become the working document of the project team.

2. Project Charter approval

  1. Charter was discussed and approved at University Committee on Information and Systems Technology on April 4th.
  2. Some confusion about the goal of project; would it go as far as actually selecting a recommended Content Management System (CMS)? (Post meeting update from Allan George - no, agreement was to charter as distributed. Selection would be done by another project).
  3. University Committee on Information System & Technology (UCIST) wanted information on project timelines.
  4. Discussion that we should attempt to wrap up project in August. Results would need to be reviewed by Web Advisory and then forwarded to UCIST in September.

3. Project Charter review

Goal

  • Assumes conclusion that we will be recommending a CMS.
  • Suggestion, move "potential" before "implementation".
  • Revised wording: To study Content Management Systems and make recommendations about their potential implementation and use in the context of the requirements of the University.

Objectives, assumptions, and scope

  • agreement in general

Deliverables

  1. The first deliverable does not lead from any of the items listed in the objectives.
  2. Should we scale back the deliverable, considering the limited time available.
  3. Wording of 1st deliverable might be to "Outline options for selecting and implementing CMSs".
  4. This question requires more thought - to be reviewed at next meeting.

4. Project implementation strategy

Objective 1. Principles

  • Item 1 - separation of content, add "navigation" to read - separation of presentation and navigation from content
  • Item 4 - distributed administration requires clarification
  • Item 8 - reusability, needs clarification and some examples, e.g. data only maintained in one place. Need to be able to deliver data to various media (e.g. Web, print).

Objective 2. Identify current types of web maintenance strategies on campus

  • most of this is known and just needs to be documented
  • need to assess how well these strategies are meeting stated principles

Objective 3. Learn about Content Management Systems

  • how will we do this? How much do we already know?
  • how do we tap into the resources on campus who have expertise in this area?
  • need to find current documentation that describes common capabilities of market leaders rather than features of specific implementations.

Objective 4. Maturity of CMS

  • we already have some data on use of CMSs in academic institutions
  • need to collect data and make available to members of project team
  • should not limit our research to either commercial or open source solutions